In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Nathan’s fundraising challenge – please support him and share the link
- * 2023 DRAFT sailing programme
- * Voyage news
- * Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE keep nominating us and sharing the link!
- * 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings – ONE place currently available!
- Vessel tracking– see where Prolific is sailing now!
- * 2022 voyage availability – young people aged 11-25 – including possible funded places
- 2022 adult voyages and volunteer training
- Financial appeal
- Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £1,000 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
* Nathan’s fundraising challenge – please support him and share the link
Regular readers may remember that back in the first lockdown, when he was 16, one of our volunteer bosuns, Nathan Kelsall, completed a fundraising challenge for Ocean Youth Trust South, running 2.6 miles every day for 26 days – a total of 67.6 miles (more than two and a half marathons).
This year Nathan has even more ambitious plans and in July he plans to climb 15 mountains over 3000 feet in Wales to raise money for Ocean Youth Trust South “because I want to give something back for all they do”. He’s going to tackle the challenge between 6th and 8th July. Please look at his fundraising page – it was only launched last night so he needs as many people as possible to share the link and support him. If anyone can complete this challenge, Nathan can – we look forward to following his progress!
* 2023 DRAFT sailing programme
We have been working on a draft sailing programme for 2023 and have sent it out to regular clients for consultation. If you normally organise group bookings and haven’t received the draft, or if you might be a new client wanting to book a full voyage in 2023, please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org. We will reserve some voyages for individual bookings and publish those details later on; but for the moment we’ll be looking at options for schools, charities and other organisations which need to get something on next year’s calendar now, as we know some of them find it helpful to have it settled by the end of this term.
* Voyage news
Last Saturday we had a maintenance day on board – big thanks to Holly, Josh, Cathy, Iori, Zeenat, Di, Steve, Glyn and Unity for servicing lots of winches, oiling the capping rail and more.
Then on Sunday we were joined by a group of boys aged 12-14 from Bruern Abbey, which describes itself as “a Specialist School for Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and other learning difficulties”. They have had a week of glorious sunshine but not always enough wind! On the first night they went down to Cowes and moored at Trinity Landing before walking to the beach and enjoying spending some time skimming stones.
On Monday they motored out through the Needles and then had an unexpectedly good sail when they found a bit more wind than the forecast flat calm!
They anchored in Swanage and people took turns in rowing the dinghy around Prolific. Next day there was no wind at all so rather than motoring to Poole, they decided to stay where they were, and had a day combining beach and swimming plus lots of training towards their sailing qualifications. In the evening they watched Pirates of the Caribbean 2
On Wednesday they had an early start, heading back through the Needles and doing some man overboard recovery drills as well as getting people out on the bowsprit:
They ended the day in Lymington, an adventure since Prolific very rarely manages to go there! They went for a walk, had showers, played football in the park and had ice-creams.
One of our supporters, Sandy Walford, happened to pass Prolific in Lymington and emailed to say “It was great to see Prolific moored up in Lymington this morning as we sailed down the river with a fleet of Lymington Scows. When we came back we had lots of cheerful waves from the deck, so we waved back enthusiastically and there were lots of ‘thumbs up’ from the young on board. It must have been a perfect week with lots of sunsets.”
By the time they came to leave Lymington there were lots of good seamanship skills on display as they were getting familiar with ropes, cleats and knots:
Yesterday they went to Cowes where they refuelled and the boys worked on planning the navigation back to Southampton so they could take charge on the final passage. They did a fantastic job – Holly the skipper said it was very impressive as she and the sea staff hardly had to intervene at all as the boys really rose to the challenge and took responsibility.
You can see the full voyage track here. They sailed 93 miles, and 11 people earned RYA Competent Crew certificates – a great achievement for such a young crew.
Big thanks to sea staff Holly, Josh, Steve, Glyn, Di – and Annette and Unity who both made great progress towards third mate qualifications.
* Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE keep nominating us and sharing the link!
Please nominate us for funding from Movement for Good!
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!
* 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings– ONE place currently available!
Can anyone help with this voyage?
23-27 July – Brixham – one more qualified or trainee member of sea staff (ideally also for maintenance day 22 July)
Dates are when young people are on board – sea staff generally need to join the day before.
Email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you can help.
All fingers crossed that no-one has to drop out of any other voyages but any volunteers who are still keen to sail should keep checking back in case we have to advertise any new vacancies.
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.
* 2022 voyage availability – young people aged 11-25 – including possible funded places
We are taking bookings for young people on the following voyages:
2-8 July, Southampton to Poole, 6 nights, £625
9-15 July, Poole tbc to Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – may be full unless we can add extra places – please ask!
23-27 July, Brixham, 4 nights, £425 – at least ONE place left!
10-16 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625
17-23 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – may be full unless we can add extra places – please ask!
24-29 Aug, Brixham to Poole, 5 nights, £525 – at least ONE place left!
30 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 5 nights, £525 – at least ONE or TWO places left!
21-25 Oct, Southampton, 4 nights, £410 (voyage starts later on Friday so people can join after schools break up for half term)
If you are interested in any of these dates. email webmaster1@oytsouth.org stating the age of the person who will be sailing. Our voyages can be open to people aged 11-25 but in practice we aim to divide people into compatible groups and not have 11-year-olds and 25-year-olds sailing together. If you are around the middle of the age range, any voyage on the list could work, but for younger or older people we will advise if your chosen date looks appropriate or not – sometimes it is hard to be sure until we have a reasonable number of enquiries.
People who are aged 18-25 can apply for places on youth voyages but would also be eligible for adult voyages (18+ with no upper age limit).
The two voyages on the list above which are most in need of extra bookings are 2-8 July, (Southampton to Poole) and 10-16 Aug (Brixham) – if anyone significantly disadvantaged or with a good reason for wanting to sail but unable to afford the voyage cost would like to apply for a part-funded or even a fully-funded place on either of these voyages, please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org.
2022 adult voyages and volunteer training
We have adult voyages scheduled as follows:
12-16 Sept 2022, Southampton, 4 nights, age range 18+, £425, adult week (Monday to Friday). Spaces available.
7-9 Oct 2022, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £215 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening). Spaces available.
These are open to anyone aged 18+ but priority will be given to people who are interested in finding out more about volunteering with the charity and potentially hoping to use the voyage to earn a recommendation for volunteer training (especially those who have not had the opportunity to earn a recommendation on a youth voyage), as well as current volunteers looking for some extra training on a voyage where they can focus on their own skills without the responsibility of supervising young people at the same time.
Email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you are interested in an adult berth.
In addition, as we did in 2021, we have earmarked a special training voyage for young volunteers aged 16-25. This will run from 6-11 September and will be largely filled by invitation: we will be looking for young people who have excelled on a youth voyage and have great potential as volunteers, or people who have recently started sailing as young volunteers and whose training we are investing in for the future of the charity. We will be aiming to raise funds to make this voyage as affordable as possible: the priority is to focus on the best young people who could be part of the charity for years to come and will make it possible for us to sail with hundreds of other young people in future. Although we will be inviting people to join this voyage, if you would like to be considered, you can ask the skipper on any other voyage if they would recommend you, or you can email webmaster1@oytsouth.org asking to be considered. If not all the places are filled with young volunteers, we may open up a few places to others in the same age range who don’t mind getting involved while others practise their leadership skills.
Financial appeal
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.
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:
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 £1,000 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 £1,000 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.