We’ve had a reasonably quiet month and as it’s half term we have decided to take a road trip to France for a few days. The office will be closed between now, Wednesday 23rd October and will reopen on the 31st October. Orders will still be taken by the shop and Simon will continue to manufacture stuff but there will be no shipping until I return.
Please don’t call the mobile either I will not be answering it!
September has flown by and we are staring down the barrel of October. We only have a few weekends of our big boat Park & Launch to run before we stop working weekends. We’ll be going down to five days a week, Mon – Fri and getting as many orders out as we can.
It’s been a busy month, with a trade order for 80 suits of sails taking much of our time along with a bunch of stickers, numbers and accessories we’ve been beavering away to get that done in amongst all our other customer orders, of which we’ve had many. We’ve sent IOM sails to the UK, USA and NZL, RC Lasers out to a superyacht and DF sails, stickers and accessories to all corners of the globe.
Life is busy too, Phoebe has started high school and is loving it, she even has her own phone now which is exciting for her. Em is back doing the 65 mile a day round trip to school and back and volunteering for the National Trust at Penrhyn Castle, it’s not really a castle you know! I’m still having a few issues with my eyes which have prevented me from sailing for the majority of the 2024 season. Bit of a pain to be honest but they are getting sorted I think. The house continues to be a joy to live in and it is a lovely place to spend time. There is a little garage project going on at the minute which is keeping me occupied after work.
No real news on anything in the Soch Sails lineup, we continue to have supply of rig bags and transmitter covers and our sail offerings continue to be popular choices in the DF fleets around the globe. Sticker wise we will have a couple of different options coming to our range. Nothing ground breaking, but we have been asked for DF65 hull only stickers and half length hull only stickers for both classes, so we are making them and they’ll be in the shop soon. Our RC Laser stock is replenished as required with some new boats on the way currently. Our sails and parts stock for the RC Laser is in good shape with almost all of what you need ready to ship as it gets ordered.
With all of that in mind, if you need anything from us then please visit the shop which is open 247 by clicking here.
Meantime here are some of the sails we have made recently.
It seems that I haven’t spent any time with the fam over the summer holidays so far. The weather forecast is rubbish for big boatyard stuff so I’m taking a few days off. If your order hasn’t left us by close of play today it will not leave us until the 27th August owing to the Bank Holiday weekend which is incoming. I’d apologise for the delay but I don’t get away very often so don’t feel that I need to!
I’m back from a few family days away and have come back to a raft of orders for all manner of our products. We’ll be working our way through the orders as they came in and we’ll get your order away as soon as we can. There will be shipping today and tomorrow and then again next Tuesday as we are closed on Monday due to a funeral that we need to attend.
The above items are now back in stock. Our friendly sailmaker has done us proud and has got us restocked with what we need. Five of everything available now including a choice of blue and black TX covers.
We also have lots of RC Laser servos for super cheap prices. £10 gets you a winch and a rudder servo.
It’s been a while sine we last updated you on what we are up to. I took a look yesterday and was shocked to find that my last update was waaaay back in April. Anyhow, I can at least say we have been busy which has been great for the team. We had some sad news about our good friend and bag sewing man Jonathan who sadly passed away from his illness. A sad loss to his family, us and the wider sailing community in N. Wales and beyond. Whilst we had already located a replacement manufacturer we have been sat in a queue with our rig bags and transmitter covers for some time now. Last week we had a meeting and have now sorted out the way forward which includes having the rig bags cut on a funky machine for us to then stick which is speeding up production time. The next batch of bags are going directly to RC Yachts but we should have our own stock shortly after.
Sailmaking was busy through mid / late April and through May but has tailed off a little into June. Lots of sails for DF classes and IOM along with a couple of “specials” for different classes and one off builds.
Other than the delay in rig bags and TX covers we have sent lots of accessories including sticker sets, deck patch sets and sail number sets all over the globe and they continue to be well received.
Our RC Laser stock has been replenished and I think we hold stock of most if not all, items that you might need for your boat. Sock levels have been updated on the webshop and you can purchase directly.
Other than that we are plodding on. The big boatyard hasn’t been super busy but it’s July tomorrow and the summer holidays start soon enough soo we’ll be busy I’m sure. Phoebe finishes primary school on Friday and turns eleven on Sunday so we are off to Yorkshire for a few days to see my mum and have a bit of a well earned break. As such the workshop will be open to deal with orders but there will be no postage between 4th – 9th July. The house is still ace, we’ve loved every second of being back in it, Emily is well and I’m in good shape although I’m missing sailing at the moment due to a slight health issue that we’re working on. Nothing serious, just a few too many years of too much fun reminding me that I’m no bionic man!
As always the webshop is open 247 to take your order which we’ll aim to ship as soon as we can. Rig bags back soon, some black TX covers in stock now, sails made to order and everything else from stock.
After a bit of a delay we’ve had a batch of our ever so lovely DF rig bags come through. Ten of each, get them while they are here as there will be another delay with the next batch. These are slightly heavier weight and are a dark blue…very nice.
Wowsers, how has April arrived so quickly? We’ve been busy bees over here in our little corner of North Wales. Our March was as busy as every and we produced and shipped over 120 suits of DF & IOM sails to locations all over the world with only two fails due to FPS (fat postie syndrome). So a productive month indeed on the sailmaking front.
Other parts of the business were also good with our ever popular DF sticker sets heading worldwide along with deck patches, keel patches and sail numbers for all classes. Our other accessories such as rig bags and transmitter covers are a little delayed at the moment. Having had to swap our sewing supplier due to illness we are now in a queue with our stuff. The sailmaker had Easter deadlines that didn’t involve us unfortunately so we are waiting for our next delivery of products, most of which will be shipped directly to our friends at RC Yachts. On the bright side of this our sailmaker has suggested some production streamlining which should allow us to keep better stock of these accessories in the future.
We had another delivery of RC Laser boats and parts and are now well on top of our stocking in this department after last years mis step on my part. We are expecting a delivery of battery chargers mid next week which will mean everything we sell for the RC Laser will be once again available from us.
We’ve been in our Global HQ at the boatyard for six years now and over that time we have done lots of sailmaking and other fun projects and we’ve added more and more stock to the shed. It seems that this has begun to take its toll on the container floor and it is now time to think about replacing the floor. No mean feat but something that needs some attention reasonably soon. It is our intention to have a weeks shutdown at some point in the next six weeks so that we can get this job done. this will mean there will be no production for a week whilst the works are taking place.
Other than that there’s not much to report, shipping times seem reasonable to all worldwide locations which is good news all round. The shop is open 247 to take an order and we’ll fulfil that order just as soon as we can. Current lead times are a week or less for sails. Sticker sets, deck patches, sail numbers and RC Laser parts are usually shipped within 24 hours. RC Laser boat packages are shipped within a week of order.
We have decided to drop our early model V1 – V5 DF65 sticker sets from our catalogue. We were getting less and less call for them and with our computer having crapped its pants we can’t now recover the files from the defunct hard drive. We might have the odd set left and when I’ve cleared out the drawers I’ll put what we have into the clearance section.
Here’s a selection of sails we made in March.
Hello again, I hope you are all keeping well. We’ve been quite busy over the last month with some large trade orders taking our time up as well as a varied selection of general orders for all our products heading all over the world.
Our RC Laser stock has been worked through and will be replenished late next week with another order. I’m pleased to report that our suppliers have realised that the RC Laser hull is indeed a spare part and I have ordered a couple for stock so you can rehull your boat is you need to without buying a whole new boat. General RC Laser stock is good, we’ve got sails in stock and more on the way, Parts are all good too, I misjudged the popularity of the blue bags so have ordered some more of those too.
Our DF Sails continue to be popular and are heading all around the world to new skippers and also skippers who have supported our brand for some time. We have decided to discontinue our Stealth Sails for DF65. There hasn’t been the uptake that we expected when we relaunched them six months ago and whenever people have ordered them we always seem to be out of stock of the correct colour. The price of importing the material has made the sails more and more expensive so we’ve sadly decided to drop them from our lineup. Our IOM sail offering is growing in popularity and we’ve seen a marked increase in skippers trying our sails. Feedback seems to be positive.
Accessories are perhaps where we lack a little, our current machinist is currently unwell and we are hoping to engage a replacement this week which will hopefully see us back in production with all that we need.
Other than toy boat stuff it’s that time of year where the big boatyard comes back to life so if there is a short delay in us getting your order away then that’s probably the reason why. Our current lead times are good with DF sails shipping within a week or less, IOM sails are between one and two weeks with stickers, accessories and RC Laser parts usually shipped within 24 – 48 hours. RC Laser boat packages are built to order and are usually a week or so lead time.
Next week we move to five days a week so we’ll be manufacturing but not shipping on Fridays from now on. Remember that the shop is open 247 to take your order and if you need something that you don’t see on the shop please just get in touch and we’ll do our best to help.
Our plain vanilla year continues with no drama at all just yet and certainly nothing on the scale of last year!
Check out some of our recent work below.
I’m in hospital on Friday 9th and Monday 12th February so there will be no orders leaving the workshop on those two days.
As much as we can fulfil will be shipped out on Tuesday 13th. Apologies for the delay.
Soch Sails 