In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Shorebased training weekend – LAST CHANCE to book! Final numbers needed by the end of this weekend
- * Refit news – help needed – including NEW volunteers’ weekend 12-13 March
- * Government youth review – findings relevant to sail training
- * 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings
- South Coast Boat Show 6-8 May – volunteers needed
- * 2022 voyage availability – individual bookings
- * 2022 voyage availability – group bookings
- * 2022 adult voyages and volunteer training
- * #WillDoes
- * Financial appeal
- Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online
- 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
* Shorebased training weekend – LAST CHANCE to book! Final numbers needed by the end of this weekend
We have to give final numbers to the catering team first thing next Monday morning, so if anyone else would like to join us for a course or a meal you will need to get in touch by Sunday night!
There is still room for more people to join us for courses – see here for details. There are definitely still spaces for the youthwork day on Saturday which will cover three topics – activities to help young people learn about environmental issues; how to get the most out of playing games on board (see last week’s newsletter for more information); and how to recognise and support young people who may be experiencing domestic abuse (see last week’s newsletter for more information). You could also ask about booking the GMDSS assessment for your radio licence though this involves an online course which must be done in advance so you would need to have time to do this next week and we would have to make sure we could get you set up in time.
The radar / e-nav course is full and both first aid courses are full too but you can always ask about going on a reserve list in case of short-notice cancellations.
Can everyone who is coming to the training weekend please take a lateral flow test before joining us? If anyone does test positive and has to drop out, we will of course refund your course fees. Do let us know a.s.a.p. – we already have at least one reserve for the first aid course who could step in if needed.
Details, timings, addresses, maps and more are all here.
* Refit news – help needed – including NEW volunteers’ weekend 12-13 March
Big thanks this week to Holly, Josh, Georgia, Iori, Allen Swift and Rob Jelley, as well as to BD Marine who have been doing some work on the engine.
There has been lots of work sanding and painting the topsides and white superstructure, and sanding the deck house and workshop. The team has also been dealing with some rust on the cylinders in the fire suppression system; sealing the steering flat; opening up systems and running and testing things; checking pipework; getting the fridges and freezers running again; doing some work on the grey water system; and tackling some sinks that used to block.
You might be able to detect that the engineering department was in charge of this week’s photos. This montage is for everyone who wants to see how carefully every seacock is checked when a vessel is launched:
The refit is closed for today because of the weather. Before they left yesterday, Josh and Georgia added every possible extra mooring line, fender and tyre:
There is plenty more to do now that we are back in Ocean Village, including lots of sanding and painting, so please do call the boat on 07990 518915 or email refit@oytsouth.org if you can spare a day or more. As well as normal weekday working, we are arranging a NEW volunteers’ weekend on 12th-13th March – please book yourself in to help if you possibly can as we need to get the sails and other gear back on board!
* Government youth review – findings relevant to sail training
This month the government has published a Youth Review policy paper, which looks at what young people need as part of the pandemic recovery.
Young people said they wanted:
– Adventures away from home
– An opportunity to meet people outside school
– A chance to engage with other young people from different backgrounds
– Having a place where “I can be myself”
– Safe spaces that feel like “a second family”
– Being able to participate in different activities
– To have their voices heard and opinions respected
– Volunteering opportunities to give back to the community
– Activities that support mental and physical wellbeing and skills development
The government’s response included this:
“By 2025, every young person will have access to regular out of school activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer.”
Sail training can clearly play a part in all of this. #SailToWellbeing continues to lie at the heart of what we do; but every sail training voyage clearly delivers on many of the priorities that have emerged from the review.
* 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings
Is there a trainee mate or bosun already booked for something who would consider a swap with the voyage 24-27 Sept? The person who was offered those dates can no longer do it and has been left without much sailing!
South Coast Boat Show 6-8 May – volunteers needed
The South Coast Boat Show will be taking place in Ocean Village over the weekend of 6-8 May. Prolific will once again be at the heart of the show, providing tea, coffee and bacon rolls to the public in exchange for donations to the charity. We also hope to have a reception for exhibitors on board on Saturday evening.
We will need a good team of volunteers on Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday, to get the boat ready with the deck awnings up plus flags and bunting, and then working in the galley to make drinks and bacon rolls, or showing people round the boat and talking to them about the work of the charity. It would be good to have some sea staff on board but also at least a couple of under-18s who have sailed with us and are happy to talk to people about what the experience was like.
Email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you would like to be involved.
2022 voyage availability – individual bookings
We are taking individual bookings for young people on the following voyages (see following sections for group voyages and adult voyages):
15-19 April, Southampton, 4 nights, £425 – ONE place possibly still available tbc!
NEW 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 – just ONE or TWO places left tbc!
10-16 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625
17-23 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625
24-29 Aug, Brixham to Poole, 5 nights, £525
30 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 5 nights, £525 – may be full unless we can add extra places – please ask!
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).
2022 voyage voyage availability – group bookings
One voyage currently available for group bookings (usually at least 12 people, which may be all young people but can include adult leaders). Please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org a.s.a.p. to discuss the requirements for your group.
10-15 Oct, Southampton, 5 nights, £525 per person.
2022 adult voyages and volunteer training
We have adult voyages scheduled as follows:
1-3 April 2022, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £215 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening). Currently full but we can take names for a reserve list in case anyone has to drop out.
12-16 Sept 2022, Southampton, 4 nights, age range 18+, £425, adult week (Monday to Friday).
7-9 Oct 2022, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £215 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening).
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.
* #WillDoes
One of the generous donors to our bursary funding is the charity #WillDoes, in memory of Will Paddy who died at the age of 14. They are involved in several great initiatives in addition to their support for OYT South, and we were very pleased to be invited to this week’s event celebrating the #Willdoes Community Bus Project which raised £40,000.00 to purchase and start the conversion of a double decker bus which will be based in Swanage, where Will grew up, providing a safe space for young people to meet and access information and support, as well as travelling to surrounding communities and being made available to local organisations who support young people.
Brian Eyres represented OYT South at the event and said it was great to see what the charity was doing – and also to hear how much they are enjoying working with OYT South and how much they appreciate hearing all the news from voyages which they help to fund.
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund for a grant towards this year’s voyage for Alfreton Park Special School, which sends us young people with multiple moderate to severe physical and learning difficulties, plus adult carers. We also have a generous grant for this voyage from the James Myatt Trust so we are well on the way to raising what we need for them.
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
“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 £900 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.