In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * 2022 voyage availability – any young people want to sail 10-16 August?
- * Voyage news
- Nathan’s fundraising challenge – please support him and share the link
- 2023 DRAFT sailing programme
- Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE keep nominating us and sharing the link!
- Vessel tracking– see where Prolific is sailing now!
- 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
* 2022 voyage availability – any young people want to sail 10-16 August?
Most voyages are full or very nearly full now – except 10-16 August, for some reason! Here’s the current list:
2-8 July, Southampton to Poole, 6 nights, £625 – provisionally full but we may be able to add extra places – please ask!
9-15 July, Poole to Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – provisionally full but we may be able to add extra places – please ask!
23-27 July, Brixham, 4 nights, £425 – provisionally full but we may be able to add extra places – please ask!
10-16 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – several places left!
17-23 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – possibly ONE place left! – please ask!
24-29 Aug, Brixham to Poole, 5 nights, £525 – provisionally full but we may be able to add extra places – please ask!
30 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 5 nights, £525 – provisionally full but we may be able to add extra places – please ask!
6-11 Sept, Southampton, 5 nights, £525 – special voyage open to young people aged 16-25 who are training as volunteers for the charity – at least 3 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.
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).
* Voyage news
Last weekend we had two great adult day sails, which give us a chance to show sponsors, donors and other friends of the charity what their support means to us!
A record was broken on Saturday: previously the oldest person to go out on Prolific’sbowsprit was 84, but here is Kit Power, who was a governor of the charity in the 1960s, doing it at the age of 88:
One of our vice-patrons, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, also went out but without breaking any records!
Another guest was Mick Charter from IMP, who supplies some of our deck hardware and has been involved in work on board Prolific since we bought her. At the end of the day he sent us a painting he had done:
Comments on the day included: “Excellent day, great welcome, good wind and sailing and lovely stories of the kids who come on board and fantastic cake.”
On Sunday we were delighted to see Lindy Chamberlain, who was an OYC skipper in the 1970s:
We also had on board Elise from MSOS, the company which provides our medical kit:
And Ed and Monica from Vortec which has given us a lot of help with Prolific’s rig and hull:
It was fantastic to see all the guests who sailed with us over the weekend – so many people who are special to the charity in different ways and have done so much to support us– from family and friends to members of our support group on the Isle of Wight. One guest summed up the experience: “We had a lovely day sailing and learning how the boat works. The crew are a lovely bunch of people and very inspiring. Thank you.”
And we had a chance to show off our new jammers which were bought using a generous donation from Parkstone Yacht Club:
Big thanks to sea staff Holly, Josh, Mark, Steve, Glyn, Chloe, Barry and Caz.
This week’s voyage is with a new client, Harris Merton School in south London – they booked in 2019 for a 2020 voyage which was cancelled by Covid, and they couldn’t manage a voyage in our shortened 2021 season, so this one was a long time coming! 60-70% of their students have family origins outside Europe, and the number eligible for Pupil Premium funding is well above the national average, with almost one in three students on free school meals.
They picked up a buoy outside Yarmouth on the first night and before bed they had some time to sit on deck with everything switched off so they could enjoy the silence, the sea, the stars and the lights. On Tuesday morning they got up at 5am to catch the tide – the skipper was very impressed to see everyone on deck and ready to go in time to catch the dawn on the longest day of the year:
The reward for such an early start, even though they had to motor in little wind and a somewhat uncomfortable sea state, was to arrive in Weymouth in the middle of the day for lunch alongside and then plenty of time left for the beach!
On Wednesday they started with some training towards their RYA certificates and by the time they set off they had better wind and a cracking sail in a good Force 3 with all sails up:
They chose an inshore route so they could enjoy seeing the coastline and sailing round Anvil Point:
Wednesday night was spent at anchor in Swanage – though it turned out to have a rather uncomfortable swell! A 7am start on Thursday initially saw little wind and they did a man overboard recovery drill:
Then the wind filled in and they had another good sail in through the Needles and back up the Solent. They stopped at Trinity Landing in Cowes and the boys planned the pilotage for the return to Southampton and then took charge of the vessel to get her safely back. All ten boys and two accompanying staff earned RYA Start Yachting certificates. You can see the full voyage track here.
Big thanks to sea staff Mark, Josh, Martyn Powe, Lucinda Neall, Martin Bayfield, Julian Ware and Saul Tomlin.
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 – 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.
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!
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 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
Huge thanks this week to Kit Power for a very kind donation!
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.