In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Voyage news
- * OYT South AGM 2022– Saturday 12th November – book NOW for curry and refit weekend!
- Holly’s leaving present
- “A new Yachtmaster!
- 2023 sailing programme
- ASTO Social Media and Marketing job
- * Winter refit volunteers needed – full-time, or helping on occasional days!
- Vessel tracking– see where Prolific is sailing now!
- * Financial appeal
- Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE nominate us for the December draw and share the link!
- Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £1,100 through Easyfundraising!
- OYT South social media – please get involved
- Branded clothing
- Raise And Sail – website for anyone looking to raise money to come sailing
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
Last weekend was a mates’ training voyage, mainly for adults interested in getting involved with the charity, as volunteer watchleaders or in other ways, though we had some friends of the charity along for the ride as well.
The crew joined on Friday night and spent the first evening on introductions, safety briefings and general chats about the charity, how we work and what we expect from volunteer watchleaders. On Saturday they sailed down into the western Solent and did lots of exercises and manoeuvres, with everyone getting used to handling the sails and lines and steering, and thinking about why we do things in a certain way in order to engage young people and keep them safe. Everyone was able to go out on the bowsprit, and several people had a go at leading different exercises. They finished the day in Cowes and had a social evening ashore. On Sunday they headed east through the forts in much windier conditions – ideal for reefing practice! – before finishing back in Ocean Village.
You can see the full voyage track here – they sailed 58 nautical miles.
We had some great feedback from the weekend:
“Above all I have this real sense of the culture on this boat which I think is one of professionalism, it’s one of learning, one of team spirit, and importantly too, one of humour. I’ve really enjoyed it, favourite moment no doubt was having a cup of tea on the bowsprit, for those of you who said you wished you had the superpower of flying, I would liken it to that.”
“I’d echo the professionalism and I think the standard of training is really brilliant and particularly I wanted to mention that all the permanent crew and the watchleaders were so good at giving instruction: you were making it very clear, and you were being very courteous and being extremely patient with us, and I thought your communication was really good and inspiring to draw out the best in people.”
“One of the best moments was coming in and feeling immediately welcome and not really like an idiot or anything, and it continued the whole weekend so I suppose that’s also the most memorable really, just I think a few people mentioned about the culture and the atmosphere and it’s sort of easy going and fun and I also got a sense of what it might be like actually on the boat for the kids which is why we all do this and I’m certainly feeling more confident about doing that in the future and keen to be involved so thank you to everyone.”
Big thanks to the sea staff for the weekend: Holly, Sara, Martyn Powe, Tom Knight, Jack Dignan, Annant Shah and Nige Bush.
Then on Monday we were joined by Bruern Abbey School for their second voyage of the year. This is a specialist school for boys diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia or other learning difficulties, and a voyage can be a fantastic opportunity for people who struggle academically to discover and demonstrate their strengths in other areas. The oldest of this week’s group was 13 and the majority were only 11. We discovered to our surprise that one of the boys is the grandson of Kit Power who helped to run the Ocean Youth Club back in the 1960s and is the current holder of Prolific’s “oldest person ever to go out on the bowsprit” record!
They came with two staff from the school, and spent Monday evening on briefings, dinner and games. The sea staff were particularly impressed with bedtime: 15 minutes quiet time, lights out and straight to sleep with no fuss at all!
On Tuesday morning they did winch drills and put some sails up, but there was no wind and they motor-sailed to Poole, enjoying the view of the Needles and doing a man overboard recovery drill on the way.
One of our supporters, volunteer watchleader and powerboat trainer Dom Coleman, of Dorset Marine Training, saw Prolific arriving in Poole and took some photos under the bluest of October skies:
They had some shore leave in Poole and went to find ice-cream but shock horror! The ice-cream shops were closed. Back on board they started the Murder game: you draw three slips giving a name, a location on board and an object. If you can get the named person to hold the right object in the right place, then they are out and you inherit their slips for your next target. All fine if your slips mean someone has to hold a spoon in the galley, but more ingenuity is required to get someone to hold a fork on the foredeck! The game can go on for the entire duration of a voyage until one person is left as the winner.
Wednesday saw an early start for the tide, with the sails up inside the harbour but again no wind. However, they did a fire drill and got people involved with navigation:
Once they were in the Solent, the wind filled in and they had a proper sail at last! They sailed up and down until people started to tire and then headed for an anchorage off Ryde. They enjoyed being at anchor and looking at the lights and ships passing; and they had a movie night on board.
On Thursday morning it was raining but some of the crew wanted to see the Solent forts so watchleader Nige studied up on their history and gave a tour guide presentation as they motored past. They went into Cowes at lunchtime in order to spend some time training towards their RYA certificates. They were also hoping to be luckier with ice-cream in Cowes!
In the meantime they are working on the record for the number of crew members who can fit inside the veg locker:
Big thanks to the sea staff: Andrew Wilkes, Holly, Sara, Steve Lacey, Lauren Mackenzie, Nige Bush and Val Hague.
OYT South AGM 2022 – Saturday 12th November – book NOW for curry and refit weekend!
The formal AGM paperwork has now gone out to members – if you think you are a member and you haven’t received yours, please let us know!
If you are not a member there is still time to join – non-members are welcome to attend the AGM but only members can vote.
You can book for the curry after the meeting whether you are a member or not!
The AGM will be held on Saturday 12th November at the office of British Marine, 1st Floor, Tagus House, 9 Ocean Way, Ocean Village, Southampton, SO14 3TJ (opposite the Ocean Village multi-storey car park where you can park). You can arrive from 1730 with the AGM starting qt 1800 and lasting only a few minutes, followed by CEO Mark Todd’s review of the year. Then we will go to Kutis Brasserie (walking distance away) for their set menu which they are very kindly making available to us at £25 per head. You must book and pay in advance using the payment form here which allows you to specify vegetarian, vegan etc.
Please note this advance payment is just for food – you will need to pay for any drinks or a tip on the night.
If you are coming to the AGM but not staying for the curry, please email caroline.white@oytsouth.org.
The weekend of 12-13 November will also be a refit volunteers’ weekend on board Prolific; and the team would appreciate plenty of help, starting 0900 on Saturday. Accommodation on board Prolific after the curry may be available for people who are helping with refit work. Please email refit@oytsouth.org to book yourself in. And if you are coming to the refit please do join us for the curry on the Saturday night – the staff team from the boat are all going so there won’t be much company on board if you don’t come for the curry!
Holly’s leaving present
Holly has been with us for two years as Staff Skipper – as well as many years of volunteering and a season as Sailing Support Officer, having first sailed with us as a young crew member in 2012.
She has played a tremendous part in the success of the charity, especially as we returned to work after losing a season and a half to Covid. We have received a great deal of fantastic feedback from voyages which Holly has skippered. She is a great sailor with a fantastic talent for working with young people, and she has contributed so much to OYT South in so many ways since she first became involved as a young crew member.
You can contribute to her leaving present here.
* A new Yachtmaster
Big congratulations to Lauren Mackenzie who passed her RYA Yachtmaster practical exam at the weekend – a great step on the way to sailing as First Mate next season!
2023 sailing programme
We are still sorting out some group bookings for our regular clients and confirming our port bookings, and a few dates and ports may still change; but a 2023 voyage programme is now available on the website. Do talk to us if you want to make a group booking (12-15 places); and for individual bookings, have a look at the voyages earmarked for individuals in school / college / uni holidays (shown in yellow on the programme – we may add more individual voyages depending on demand) and contact webmaster1@oytsouth.org to express an interest.
ASTO Social Media and Marketing job
Would you like a job working on social media and marketing for the Association of Sail Training Organisations? See here for details. It’s a fantastic way to help spread the word about the great work being done by sail training organisations all across the UK – including OYT South! Please share the job description with anyone who might be interested.
* Winter refit volunteers needed – full-time, or helping on occasional days!
We are planning a slightly different sort of winter refit this year – those of you who have been involved for a while will know that it has often taken a full four months between November and March; but this year we are planning to get the bulk of the work finished in November and December, and then take a break from full-time refit until the time comes to get ready for sea trials and the first voyages in March.
We are therefore looking to recruit a core team of volunteers to come and help us this winter in November and December. This is something we’ve been doing since at least 2002: a small full-time team offers continuity alongside all the other volunteers who come for odd days or weekends. We provide free food and accommodation (mainly on board, this year) for the core team, as well as great experience in boat maintenance and a chance to make a real difference to a good cause while enjoying a sociable couple of months in the team. Many previous core team members are still great friends of the charity – some still sailing with us, others using the experience to help develop their careers. Please see here for details and how to apply.
No particular experience is needed – just a great attitude. We can teach you some skills but we also need people who can sand and paint, shift equipment, assist the skilled team and more. This is ideal if you are on a gap year or otherwise between jobs and other commitments!
We will also be looking for volunteers wanting to help for shorter periods or just the occasional day – mainly weekdays but with the occasional volunteer weekend (including 12-13 November). Email refit @oytsouth.org if you have any free time in November or December and would like to come and lend a hand. Sea staff – don’t forget that if we have multiple applications for popular voyages next year, priority goes to people who have helped the charity in other ways – coming to refit, raising money, introducing new clients etc. Helping at refit is also a great way to learn about bits of the boat you might not see during the season – and it’s always fun and sociable too!
Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing now!
Don’t forget you can always have a look and see where Prolific is sailing.
Just for the moment we can’t welcome visitors on board due to Covid protocols but if you discover that Prolific is in a harbour somewhere near you, please go and say hello from a safe distance. And sometimes you may be just what we need if you have local information or a bit of time to spare to help with something, or a car for running a quick errand!
Big thanks to the Graham High Charity who sponsor our vessel tracking.
There are also apps like Marine Traffic that you can use to track Prolific on your phone.
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to the Association of Sail Training Organisations for the latest Hammond Innes bursary. Thanks also to Scott Rigg who chose us as a charity for a birthday gift, and to Stuart Harrison who has set up a regular donation to us. Which is a useful reminder to thank some of the other people who make monthly or quarterly donations which don’t always get a mention in the newsletter: Shaun Ormrod, Will Collins, Penny Sykes, Catherine Sillett and Isaac Jones and others who prefer to be anonymous.
We need a regular flow of funds to cover at least three major areas: bursaries for young people who could not otherwise afford to sail; vessel maintenance and equipment; and staff salaries – please help, or pass on our details to anyone you come across who might make a grant, large or small.
See here for how to make a donation – you can contribute by cheque, phone or PayPal, but please do something if you possibly can. Don’t forget that if you complete and return a Gift Aid form (pdf) we can claim back tax on your donation.
Movement for Good Awards – TPLEASE nominate us for the December draw and share the link!
We weren’t lucky in the September draw – but please nominate us now for the December draw for funding from Movement for Good! Even if you nominated us for a previous draw you can do so again.
Several times in the past we have been successful with these awards and we have had significant sums to spend on our work with young people, but it really does require as many people as possible to nominate us and to share this post and encourage others to help – it’s incredibly quick and easy! We weren’t lucky in the June draw but that’s all the more reason to keep on nominating us for the next draw.
Go to https://movementforgood.com/ecclesiastical and click Nominate Now. In the box “search for charity name or number”, put Ocean Youth Trust South or 1079959 and select “education and skills” under “charity type”. Fill in your own details and that’s it – it takes seconds!
Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
Our friend, Gosport-based marine artist Colin Baxter, has prints taken from an original painting of Prolific available for you to buy.
The unframed prints will measure 370mm x 230mm plus border. They will be numbered and signed, and will cost £45 if you can pick yours up in Gosport, and £50 if you need it posted (they will probably come rolled in a cardboard tube). Order here:
| Postage / collection options |
Anyone outside the UK wanting to order a copy, please email us.
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £1,100 through Easyfundraising!
“What a fool I was!” says Mark Todd.
“For ages I’ve seen in the bulletin that Easyfundraising is a good way to raise money for charity, but I never got round to doing anything about it, and when Caz told me how easy it was, I didn’t listen.
I thought it might be a hassle, or that I’d have to remember to do something when I bought stuff online, or that it probably wasn’t really worthwhile.
This week I finally got round to it and it turns out it’s a REALLY EASY way to raise money for the charity I care about … and I definitely should have done it sooner.
It takes a minute or two to sign up; you can do it on a desktop, tablet and/or phone, and you can install a widget that flags up when a donation is available. Once that’s done, imagine you’re looking to buy – say – a rainbow unicorn: just put “rainbow unicorn” in your usual search box, and the list of results shows you which sites come with donations, and how much. It’s up to you what to pick and whether to accept the donation from the site, but a huge choice of sites will offer a donation – and it doesn’t cost you a penny.
I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner … but if there’s anyone else who has been like me and just not got round to it, PLEASE click the link now and sign up!”
We have already raised more than £1,100 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South is also registered with Amazon Smile which makes donations to us when people shop – Amazon will donate 0.5% of the net purchase price on eligible purchases. If you ever shop with Amazon, do have a look – once you pick Ocean Youth Trust South as your chosen charity and start using https://smile.amazon.co.uk, you don’t need to do anything further, and all your other Amazon account settings remain unchanged.
OYT South social media – please get involved
One of the simplest ways you can help us while we can’t sail is to keep looking at our social media pages and share, retweet or like as many posts as possible. This all helps to make sure other people hear about us too – and the more we can keep alive the interest in our charitable work, the more people might help us now or start to think about sailing with us in future. Maybe you’ve got a community group, a local page, even a street WhatsApp where members might like to know that you are involved with a charity that could be of interest to them?
We are on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/oytsouth – please do give us a Like! If you were friends with John Laing on our old page (https://www.facebook.com/johnlaingsailing please do move to the new page now.
We are also on Twitter @oytsouth so please follow us!
And Instagram @oyt_south
And LinkedIn Ocean Youth Trust South
Please note that OYT South has a policy that our adult staff and volunteers should not make or accept individual online friend requests with crew members aged under 18, or vulnerable adults. Crew members can use the sites to stay in touch with the boat and with each other, but not with individual staff and volunteers.
Branded clothing
OYT South branded clothing available – please see here. You can buy hoodies (in a wide range of colours), fleeces, short- and long-sleeved t-shirts, baseball caps, beanie hats, polo shirts and more, all with OYT South’s logo!
Raise And Sail – website for anyone looking to raise money to come sailing
Raise And Sail is a section of this website full of ideas, information and support for young people who would like to raise money in order to come sailing with us. Huge thanks to Fiona Keen and Emma Burrows for putting Raise And Sail together. We hope you will find it useful – let us know how you get on as we can add success stories and new ideas to the site in due course.
New readers’ welcome and introduction
If you have recently registered your interest in OYT South, welcome to our newsletter, which is sent out almost every week, normally on a Friday, and is also copied onto the website.
If you have just started receiving this newsletter by email, it is because we believe you have signed up and consented to receive it – perhaps by emailing us to ask for it, completing a form on our website, or adding your email address to the book on board where people can sign up to receive news, as well as leaving comments. If this was a mistake or you simply decide you want to stop receiving the newsletter, just press “reply” to the email and write UNSUBSCRIBE at the top, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org asking to unsubscribe.
Each week the newsletter includes a wide range of news from the boat and from the charity, including details of voyages available for young people; adult voyages; opportunities for adult volunteers both ashore and afloat, and much more. We find that while some people read the bulletin almost every week, many others dip in and out, and read it when it’s convenient – which is why some items are repeated. New items are marked with an asterisk * so that if you did read it last week, you can see which sections you can safely skip.
Please feel free to join in any OYT South activities – nothing here is restricted to long-standing members or people who already know one another. New people are always very welcome!
If you need an introduction to the work of OYT South, you should find a lot of useful information on our website. But essentially, we are a registered charity (no. 1079959) which exists to offer adventure under sail as a personal development opportunity for young people aged 12-25, from the widest possible range of backgrounds. A high proportion of our young crew members are disadvantaged or deserving in some way: many of these sail in groups organised by other charities, youth clubs, special schools and so on, and will fill the bulk of our term-time voyages. But those from more fortunate backgrounds are also welcome to sail, either in groups or by coming as individuals on a mixed voyage. Every year we run a variety of shorter local voyages plus longer adventure trips – sometimes including Tall Ships races during the summer holidays. If you are aged 12-25 and hoping to sail as a crew member, take a look here – and this section is also useful for adults who are thinking of organising a voyage for a young person. Adults planning to organise a full group voyage should also see here. Adults who want to sail themselves should see here.
We have a professional staff skipper and engineer, but our watch leaders are normally all volunteers, who combine sailing skills with an interest in working with young people. You can find more information here – how the system works, how to join, and profiles of existing staff and volunteers.
To volunteer for OYT South ashore, please see here. To help with the vessel’s annual refit, see here.
It is a very expensive business maintaining a boat, running an office and employing staff. If you want to help us, please become a member of OYT South. Or see here for information on making a donation.
If you have any questions, please do email – or contact the office.
Receiving this newsletter by email
Many thanks to all those who have given consent to receiving this newsletter by email. If you are not currently getting it by email and would like to, please just click here Newsletter Subscribe and press “send”, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org.