In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Voyage news – end of the season!
- * Winter refit volunteers needed
- Holly’s leaving present
- Sara’s leaving present
- 2023 voyages available for young people
- 2023 adult voyages and volunteer training
- February shorebased training weekend for volunteers
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s off the price of your next voyage!
- * Financial appeal
- Oysterband – Portsmouth 30th November
- 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
* Voyage news – end of the season!
Last week’s newsletter left our crew from Ambition, Aspire, Achieve in Cowes on Friday morning. After Happy Hour cleaning, they spent an hour or so working on the RYA Start Yachting syllabus – learning knots, parts of the boat and points of sail. They then went ashore to explore Cowes and buy some essential supplies for the Hallowe’en party being planned for Saturday. After lunch they left Cowes, set the double reefed mizzen, main and staysail and sailed to Yarmouth where they anchored for the night. For the young people it was a great experience being at anchor and waking up the next day surrounded by sea.
Saturday was Party Day but they had lots to do before they could relax: they weighed anchor and set sail for Cowes. By this time the young people were familiar with the sail hoists and steering so the sea staff took a back seat whilst they did all the work! The wind had decreased and it was lovely sail down the Solent.
Whilst Holly refuelled Prolific in Cowes, everyone else worked on a pilotage plan to take us back to Southampton the next day. Once alongside in Shepards Marina, the party preparations began in earnest. The saloon became a grotto with decorations, cobwebs and spiders. Amazing scary (but delicious) cakes, biscuits and ghostly chocolate-covered pears emerged from the galley. Face paint transformed people into ghastly spectres. Party games included the ‘freeze dance’ game, doughnuts on strings and ‘slaps’:
On Sunday the two watches implemented their pilotage plans and navigated Prolific safely back to her berth in Ocean Village.
One boy said: “I had an amazing five days, it was lovely, everyone was co-operating and it was lovely because everyone made new friends, they had fun, everyone had to work hard and some people even enjoyed sleeping on the boat … it’s an amazing co-operation where people can always go on the sea, do a lot of hard work, it’s like five days off from the land and you enjoy yourself on the boat, it’s like a new experience for everybody because some people haven’t been on a boat before, and it’s lovely.” Others said: “My favourite bit is the fact that I know how to sail a boat without no-one like to help, I just know how to do it”; “The boat trip was very fun you learnt about what part of the boat is which and learnt how they function”; “I enjoyed living on a boat for 5 days although it’s tiring with the ropes and sails” and “Loved this trip as it was my first time on a boat and would beg to go again.”
The two adult leaders who came with the AAA group told us: “A really good part for me was getting to see all the young people that I work with, working as a team together and putting their differences aside, and focusing on what needed to be done … Lots of learning and development made, thanks to you all” and “The week went very quickly and it was very enjoyable to see the young people engaging and listening to instruction. The Prolific crew were all very welcoming and friendly … My best bit was the Hallowe’en party where everyone joined in, done baking, made decorations, and they did their face paint.”
After the voyage was over, the AAA organiser wrote to say: “I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to you, the crew and the captain for their patience and understanding and making the voyage a wonderful and fun experience for the young people … The young people were all smiles and talking about everything they had learnt and how much they had enjoyed themselves over the five days.”
You can see the full voyage track here – they sailed 85 nautical miles, and everyone in the group earned an RYA Start Yachting certificate.
Big thanks to sea staff Andrew Wilkes, Lauren Mackenzie, Holly, Lucinda Neall, Dave Dent and Michelle van den Bergh.
We finished the sailing season with a day sail for our major sponsors MDL who do so much to support our charitable work – they enjoyed being on board for Hallowe’en:
Big thanks to sea staff Holly, Josh, Lauren, Andrew Wilkes, David Dent, Martin Bayfield, Unity Bowns, Michelle van den Bergh and Caz.
And that’s the end of the 2022 sailing season – what a great year. Huge thanks to everyone who has been involved. There will be some statistics from the season in the newsletter in a couple of weeks and then we can all pause for a moment and take real pride in what we have achieved.
But for now, there’s a busy refit to be done …
Winter refit volunteers neededThe refit has started already! Josh and Unity have been on board this week, with Josh working on plans for some engineering issues that need to be tackled over the coming months, while Unity has been sorting the stowage and checking and packing up kit like the lifejackets and oilskins – and seems pleased to have got the oilskin packing done:
We also have this picture of Josh and Unity at refit and would be grateful if anyone can explain what is happening or even which way up this ought to be:
We will need LOTS more help in the coming weeks and months. There is plenty to do on board Prolific – moving gear off the boat, cleaning, testing and servicing, repairing and maintaining. Some jobs are highly skilled, others are entirely unskilled, and in between are some jobs we can teach if you have never done them – who wants to learn to service a winch, for example?
We are mainly looking for people to help on 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!
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.
Sara’s leaving present
Sara Abdur is leaving the staff team at the end of the year after a fantastic few months sailing on a short contract as Staff Cadet. She is going to stay involved as a volunteer so we won’t be losing touch. But everyone who has sailed with Sara this year knows that she has brought unstoppable enthusiasm and maximum effort to the role, and has always wanted to learn as much as she possibly can. She has made enormous progress in a few months and has been a valuable and popular member of the team.
So we would like to send her off with a nice present at the end of her time on the staff! Please donate here.
2023 voyages available for young people
Dates open for individual bookings are as follows. Please state your age when applying – we can sail with young people aged 11-25 but we aim to organise compatible groups and not have too wide an age range on any voyage.
7-11 April 2023, Southampton, 4 nights, £475
20-26 July 2023, Falmouth to Brixham, 6 nights, £675
9-15 Aug 2023, 6 nights, Brixham, £675
16-22 Aug 2023, 6 nights, Brixham, £675
29 Aug-3 Sept 2023, 5 nights, Poole to Southampton, £575
There is also a voyage 5-10 Sept out of Southampton aimed at people aged 16-25 who have already sailed with us and been recommended to train as volunteers to sail on future voyage. Places on this voyage are by invitation only but if you would like to be considered, please email us.
We’re happy to take smaller groups (e.g. three or four people) on individual voyages to mix with others; but many clients will want to book the whole boat exclusively for their own group (twelve to fifteen people, including any adult leaders who come with the group). Dates available for whole-boat bookings:
12-16 April 2023, 4 nights, Southampton, £475 per person
25-30 April 2023, 5 nights, Southampton, £575 per person
1-5 May 2023, 4 nights, Southampton, £475 per person
14-19 May 2023, 5 nights, Southampton, £575 per person
11-16 June 2023, 5 nights, Southampton, £575 per person
9-14 Oct 2023, 5 nights, Southampton, £575 per person.
Contact webmaster1@oytsouth.org to express an interest.
2023 adult voyages and volunteer training
We have adult voyages scheduled as follows:
5-7 May 2023, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £245 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening).
11-15 Sept 2023, Southampton, 4 nights, age range 18+, £475, adult week (Monday to Friday).
22-24 Sept 2023, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £245 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.
February shorebased training weekend for volunteers
We are in the process of setting up the usual shorebased training weekend for volunteers in February, with courses including RYA First Aid; GMDSS radio exams; Disability Awareness and more. Details still to be finalised but we are very much hoping it will run 11-12 February so please keep the dates free if you can.
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s off the price of your next voyage!
Now open for 2022 entries.
If you have enjoyed a voyage with OYT South and want to come again (and are aged 11-25), please think about entering for this award. You can win up to £500 off the price of another voyage, by sending in an account of a voyage you have already done with us. It can be a logbook, diary, story, pictures, video – anything which gives the judges an idea of why you had a good time and would like to come again. The prize is judged at the end of each season and the award can be spent on a voyage the following year. Entries should be emailed to webmaster1@oytsouth.org or posted to the office. See here for more details of this award, which was set up in memory of the charity’s founder. You can also see some previous winning entries.
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Ellis Campbell Foundation from whom we have just received the last instalment of a very generous three-year grant towards staff salaries; and to Wembury Sailing Club and Andy Brown who have kindly offered to make a contribution towards bursaries for next season.
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.
Oysterband – Portsmouth 30th November
Some of you know that OYT South’s Business Manager, Caz, has a sideline touring as merchandiser with Oysterband who are long-standing friends to OYT South (see pic of three band members visiting us in Ocean Village) and just for once the band has a local gig at a time when the boat is not at sea: Portsmouth on 30th November – do come along! (If you don’t know the music, Oysterband spent several weeks at no 1 in the UK folk chart this year … but it’s not the quiet contemplative brand of folk …)
Movement for Good Awards – PLEASE 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.