In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * New addition to Prolific’s staff team
- * Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE nominate us and share the link!
- * Voyage news
- * 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings – revised list – PLEASE help!
- * James Hanratty
- 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
* New addition to Prolific’s staff team
We are delighted to announce that Sara Abdur will be joining our staff team on board Prolific from late June to the end of the season!
Sara is the current holder of our Gipsy Moth Trophy for Young Volunteer of the Year:
Sara is aged 20 and came to us originally on a voyage with George Green’s School in Tower Hamlets in 2019. She immediately impressed the skipper and earned a recommendation to join our volunteers’ team, sailing on voyages and helping at refits, taking part in our lockdown activities and fundraising, and proving to be among our most enthusiastic and efficient volunteers. She qualified as a third mate earlier this season, and when we wanted to add someone else to support Holly and Josh on board, we were delighted to find that Sara was available! We want to give her as much training and experience as possible while she is with us, and we know everyone on board will want to support her and will enjoy working alongside her!
* Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE nominate us and share 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!
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!
* Voyage news
Last week’s newsletter saw our crew from Applemore College just coming to the end of their voyage. You can see the full voyage track here. They sailed 136 nautical miles, and there were some really positive comments from the crew, who were all aged 14-15:
“This trip has made me more confident in staying away from home”;
“The team made me feel like I was part of the team and brought out the real me… We were shown multiple times so it went into my head”;
“My team got on good and as the days went on I trusted them more … I got on with other people well and it was like having a different family for a week”;
“I enjoyed this trip because I got to help out in all the tasks, and the fish finger wrap was banging. Also the chocolate cakes were nice and the popcorn was class”;
“Amazing had lots of fun, learnt new things and was nice to have time away from annoying brothers”;
and “This was the most fun I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget this week.”
The crew included a 15-year-old film-maker, Ollie, who created this fantastic video:
Big thanks to sea staff Mark, Josh, Lucy Grodie, Glyn Collins, Sandy Garrity, Andy Viney and especially Iori Kent as last week’s very long newsletter managed to miss out the fact that at the beginning of this month, Iori – who was the full-time core team refit volunteer over the winter – successfully passed his bosun assessment, and Annant Shah who completed his second mate assessment on this voyage – very well done to both of them!
Over the weekend we had two day sails for friends and supporters of the charity. Here’s David Snelson, Trinity House Elder Brother, at the helm:
We were particularly pleased to be able to invite a few people who had raised money for us in memory of family members, and others who had helped the charity in various ways, in order to give them an insight into what young people do on board and show them just how much difference their support makes to our young crew members:
Big thanks to sea staff Holly, Andy, Mark, Caz, Tom, Annant, Georgia, Lucy and Anjelica.
This week we had a voyage with Park House School. They sailed down to an anchorage in Osborne Bay on the first night – a lovely night with the young people enjoying the movement of the boat and the sound of the water alongside the hull. Tuesday saw an early start, motorsailing down to the Needles and seeing dolphins on the way. The headsail went up and they sailed across Poole Bay – there was a little bit of uncomfortable motion, but the young people made a huge effort to join in even when they weren’t feeling too good.
Eventually the wind died and they motored the rest of the way to Weymouth, where they had games on board in the evening. Wednesday was very windy and they couldn’t sail but had a full programme of training towards their RYA qualifications – knots, weather forecasting, rules of the road, boat terminology, a recap of fire and man overboard recovery drills, and a session looking at our flares and other distress equipment such as EPIRBs and SARTs. Then ashore for “the best ice-cream in the world”, and a chance to visit the beach and the little funfair. After dinner they watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in the saloon with popcorn.
Big thanks to Phil Whiffing for this lovely photo of Prolific in Weymouth:
Big thanks also to sea staff Holly, Sparky, Tom, Nyssa, Anjelica, Shaun – and Georgia, making a very welcome guest appearance!
* 2022 volunteer sea staff bookings – revised list – PLEASE help!
Can anyone help to fill any of these spaces:
2-8 July – Southampton to Poole – one more qualified or trainee member of sea staff
PRIORITY 16-22 July – Brixham – one more qualified watchleader needed (ideally also for maintenance day 22 July)
23-27 July – Brixham – one more qualified or trainee member of sea staff (ideally also for maintenance day 22 July)
30 Aug – 4 Sept – Poole to Southampton – one more qualified or trainee member of sea staff (ideally also for maintenance day 5 Sept)
24-27 Sept – Southampton – one more qualified or trainee member of sea staff
All 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 with any of these.
* James Hanratty
We recently received the sad news from the Royal Southampton Yacht Club that James Hanratty has died. He was a supporter and donor to OYT South, who regularly kept in touch and really valued our work. We send condolences to his family and friends on behalf of everyone at OYT South. The Commodore of the RSYC described him as “A much loved member of our club who will be sorely missed for his generosity, camaraderie and all round great guy.”
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 TWO places left!
10-16 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625
17-23 Aug, Brixham, 6 nights, £625 – at least TWO places left!
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 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.