In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Voyage news – including Royal visit
- * 2025 programme – bookings open for group and individual voyages
- * Sea staff vacancies this season
- Winter refit core team needed – including a driver
- Safeguarding – new team member needed
- MDL fundraising event in Ocean Village – help needed
- Maintenance days – PLEASE help
- 2024 AGM – a date for your diary
- * Financial appeal
- Prolific earrings inspired by a crew member – and now NEW necklaces as well!
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,200 through Easyfundraising!
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
- Branded clothing
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Voyage news – including Royal visit
The last newsletter ended as our crew were finishing a voyage in Guernsey, having sailed from Brixham. They had lots of good things to say about their week on board:
The next voyage started last Saturday, with the crew joining in Guernsey and eager to have fun! It was largely an experienced group of young people on board including some who had already sailed on board Prolific this year, although there were some new faces too.
They started with briefings, introductions and getting to know each other:
This voyage was the ASTO Guernsey to Poole Small Ships Race in celebration of the RNLI 200th Anniversary – lots of sail training vessels crewed by young people all competing against each other. There was plenty of excitement among the crew and sea staff!
Saturday was the start of the build-up to the race, and the crew used their afternoon exploring Guernsey. They spent some time looking around the Guernsey museum, which is situated in a park high above the water, with stunning views looking out to sea.
They visited a medieval tower, and from there they could look out across the entire island.
Back on board, they had a competitive game of ‘Pass the Squeeze’, and completed the usual pre-voyage winch drills.
On Sunday, the crew had a tour of the castle, next to the Guernsey Yacht Club. They were then invited by Challenge Wales (one of the other sail training boats taking part in the race) to a ‘Blindfolded BYOD (Bring Your Own Dinghy) Race’ in the marina. Across several heats, Prolific’s crew and sea staff represented themselves well, with a few podium results, and lots of fun was had by all.
In the man-made lake next to the yacht club, the crew got the opportunity to do some dinghy sailing. All the staff got involved as well, including OYT South’s skipper Gotch and CEO Mark Todd. Gotch reports that: “Mark and I were embarrassingly towed back to the pontoon by a ten-year-old, as neither could sail our optimists back. Nothing to see here!”
Sunday ended with a barbecue with all of the other crews and boats, and everyone had a chance to relax and socialise.
Monday was quite a breezy day, with over 25 knots of wind, and was the first chance for Prolific’s crew to get Prolific sailing. But there was much more to the day: when this crew joined the boat, they had been told that they would be sailing with Royalty!
The crew were honoured to welcome aboard Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, who was visiting the festivities as part of her role as patron of UK Sail Training. There was a huge amount of media interest and our crew had to work hard and execute everything perfectly, and over the course of two hours they had left the dock, hoisted all the sails, tacked, and then dropped all the sails and returned back to the dock. HRH got involved with sailing the boat, including helming Prolific through the tack, and took the time to speak to everyone.
Skipper Gotch described the crew as “incredible – they worked hard and were true ambassadors of sail training”. This was a fantastic day for the charity, and not one that will be forgotten in a hurry!
Several of the crew were using the week as their residential for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award so it will be good to put in their record book that they sailed with the Duchess!
We were featured by both the BBC (including an interview with Josh) and ITV – in fact we led the news in the Channel islands!
And there was a big photo and a namecheck for Prolific and OYT South in The Times:
We also got coverage in the Mail and the Express. And we even got mentioned in Hello! and Tatler – though they were more interested in HRH’s clothes and hairstyle than in the boat …
And we were all over social media – particularly when the Royal Family’s own Instagram account highlighted the visit!
After all that excitement, Tuesday brought the start of the race! Prolific was out early, and all the crew practised a man overboard recovery drill, hoisted some sails and did some practice tacking. Due to very light winds predicted later on, the race start was brought forwards to 10am, the crew expertly manoeuvred the boat, and managed to cross the start line first!
Sadly they soon fell towards the rear of the group, as the lighter vessels overtook Prolific. The first racing mark was off the tip of Herm, and as they bore away onto their new course, they got out an additional sail – the mizzen staysail – in a very speedy hoist, and sailed with it for eight hours until they got past Alderney.
At this point the wind died to under 5 knots, and the boat speed sank to about 1.5 knots and sometimes even less.
The crew sailed the boat through the night, and all through the next day, drifting slowly across the channel. With a low swell causing the boat to roll and needing to rig gybe preventers because of the sails flapping, it was a challenging time crossing the shipping lanes. However, the crew kept their spirits high throughout, and they sailed along in a tight group with several other competitors, including two of the Morning Star Trust yachts.
In the true spirit of Sail Training, everyone was calling each other over the radio, having friendly chats and asking how they were each getting on. It was a great community feeling, and the crew on Prolific were still having plenty of fun.
By Wednesday the other yachts in Prolific’s class had left her far behind, apart from Rona 2, who had got trapped in the strong tide off Cherbourg and had been left at a disadvantage as they tried to make up ground. As the crew sailed towards Poole and they approached the headland, Rona 2 made a comeback! Catching up seemingly out of nowhere, the boats raced neck and neck towards the finishing line.
As night fell, the wind increased to a dizzying ten knots, which felt very thrilling after the slow drifting they had done up to this point. Rona 2 charged towards the finish line, but Prolific unfortunately wasn’t going to make it on her current tack, and had to tack round in order to reach the line. Our skipper described the situation: “They just managed to squeeze in front of us at the last minute. They did very well to come back from a tactical error in Cherbourg. I take my hat off to them.”
This was the atmosphere on board in the closing stages of the race after all those hours of sailing very slowly with no wind:
Finally crossing the finish line, last, after their mammoth race, the crew played “We are the champions” over the deck speakers, singing along and feeling undefeated. The crossing ended with a night navigation exercise, where the crew put together the final pilotage into Poole, which they did excellently, despite feeling sleep-deprived from the long race.
Prolific arrived in Poole at 1am on Thursday morning, and everybody was treated to a well-deserved sleep and a lie-in.
That afternoon the crew were very lucky to be able to get some tips from a sailor with a real racing pedigree. Thanks to a connection via our long-term supporters, the Pointer Family Trust (huge thanks to them), OYT South is supporting Pip Hare in the forthcoming Vendee Globe solo non-stop race around the world. Her website says: “Since its inception in 1989, fewer than 100 international skippers have completed the race. By comparison, that is less than 3% of the total number of people who have climbed Everest! (5000 climbers), Only 7 women in history, and fewer than 10 British skippers in total have ever finished the race.” Pip is an incredible inspiration for OYT South’s sailors and we’ll be cheering her all the way from the race start in November and sharing her race updates in this newsletter. So it was fantastic to get an invitation from Pip for all our crew to go on board her race yacht Medallia in Poole.
Here’s Lauren and Sara getting stuck in with supervision from Pip, and our team having a tour of the boat:
The day ended with spectacular fireworks in Poole:
Because the ASTO race was in celebration of their 200th anniversary, today’s activities with the young crews were all about the RNLI, with a visit to the RNLI College and sessions on water safety and sea survival as well as a look round a lifeboat.
This evening will be the prizegiving for the race, and a barbecue for all the crews.
The crew leave us tomorrow, and everyone who doesn’t already have it has been working hard for their RYA Start Yachting qualifications. They sailed 130 nautical miles and you can see the vessel track here.
Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Mark Todd, Lauren, Josh, Tom Knight, Anna Owen and Jack Thompson, as well as Sara Abdur, Unity Bowns, Harry Lack and Tyler Grant who were all young sea staff sailing in crew berths.
* 2025 programme – bookings open for group and individual voyages
We’ve now had lots of bookings from our regular clients and we are delighted to publish the 2025 programme with plenty more exciting opportunities for young people to join us next year.
A lot of OYT South’s voyages are taken by organised groups such as a school, charity or youth club, who book the whole boat; but we always designate a number of voyages in school holidays for individuals who want to join a mixed group and make new friends. We have provisionally identified the first few individual voyages for next year (we will add more later) including some in the summer holidays 2025. Some of these will be standard voyages open to anyone, but these two will be a little different:
6-12 July, Le Havre to Dunkirk, £735 per person, 6 nights, minimum age 15 – this is a Tall Ships Race with a fantastic festival at either end – a truly exciting adventure and a chance to create memories for a lifetime!
11-15 August, Brixham to Brixham, £525 per person, 4 nights, age 11-16. A lot of our individual voyages attract keen young sailors, over-18s, people doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and people wanting to test themselves with a challenging adventure; and, weather permitting, longer passages such as Channel crossings. But this doesn’t suit everyone! So for next year, we have designated one shorter coastal voyage as a gentler opportunity, ideal for the younger end of our age range (11-16-year-olds) and passports not required. If you know anyone who is unsure about coping with a more ambitious voyage and wants an easier introduction, this is the voyage for them!
See the 2025 programme for other individual and group voyages (and contact us to be added to the mailing list as we designate additional dates for individual voyages).
* Sea staff vacancies this season
Please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you can help with any of the remaining vacancies.
People who have been newly-recommended to join the volunteers’ team: please do contact us if you are interested in suitable voyages from this list – we can advise you if a particular vacancy needs someone with more Prolific experience, but where possible this list is for you as much as it is for established volunteers. We will need to make sure your DBS, references and other paperwork is in place before you can sail. And do keep checking the list in each edition of the newsletter as people do occasionally drop out and leave other vacancies!
Dates given are when crew are on board so volunteers are generally needed the day before:
6-10 Sept, Southampton – at least one and possibly two people needed, one of whom must be female – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun – for a voyage with young people in care. Ideally able to help with maintenance on 5th Sept as well.
16-20 Sept, Southampton – qualified watchleader. School group (new client)
25-29 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader. Swindon Scouts group.
Please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you would like to sail!
Winter refit core team needed – including a driver
If you are planning a gap year, or you are between jobs or for any other reason potentially available for several weeks or months this winter, might you be interested in joining our full-time refit team? We will need a couple of full-time volunteers between November and March. More details here. Plenty of our previous refit volunteers have gone on to great jobs in the marine industry – it really helps to have maintenance experience as well as good sailing skills when applying for sailing jobs! And any refit volunteers who want to sail in Prolific can be offered berths as watchleaders, bosuns, or relief engineers. So it’s a great way of developing useful experience, contributing to a good cause, securing free food and accommodation for a few months, and having a positive experience with a fun group of people! If you’re interested, please read the web page and email us with the details requested at the bottom of the page.
We’re looking for at least one of the core team volunteers to have a driving licence and be able to drive the refit car, to help get people between the accommodation and the boat, or for fetching kit and taking parts for servicing.
We’ll also need lots of casual volunteers helping for a day, a few days or a weekend, but we can get people booked in for that much nearer the time – at this stage we are really just thinking about the core team.
Safeguarding – new team member needed
OYT South’s Safeguarding Officer is Steve Lacey, ably assisted by Cathy Lacey and until recently by Anjelica Finnegan. However, thanks to the arrival of baby Hraefn (big congratulations!), Anjelica has decided it is time to stand aside. We could really do with someone else in the safeguarding team, if only so that we don’t have to disturb Steve and Cathy when they are on holiday! Is there anyone with safeguarding experience who would like a chat with us about what the role involves, or can anyone suggest someone we might approach, or a good way of finding someone who would be ideal for the role? Safeguarding lies at the heart of everything we do so it is really important to find the right person. Email caroline.white@oytsouth.org. Meanwhile thanks to Anjelica for all her support in recent years and the very best of luck for the future!
MDL fundraising event in Ocean Village – help needed
MDL are once again showing their support for us and other charities with their family fun day on Friday 30th August. We would like to support them with this event and help raise funds and awareness for OYT South, Prostate Cancer UK and Breast Cancer UK. We would love your help on the day – if you are available, please email Susanna: susannapaynter@oytsouth.org. (NB it’s MDL’s Lauren not OYT South’s Lauren having her head shaved!)
Maintenance days – please help
We have several planned maintenance days during the season – these are essential to keep Prolific in working order and avoid losing voyage time to maintenance issues. We need all the help we can get, both skilled and unskilled – there are easy jobs for people not used to boat maintenance, or maybe we can teach you a useful new skill!
Please put these dates in your diary:
Thursday 5th September – Southampton
Sunday 20th October – Southampton
If you call the boat on 07990 518915, or email refit@oytsouth.org, we can get you booked in for maintenance days. We can feed you on board and probably offer accommodation the night before or after if needed. Generally we need over-18s, or 16- and 17-year olds who are sailing as bosuns or trainee bosuns.
Sea staff on the voyages immediately before and after these days should plan to include the maintenance day as part of your booking unless specifically agreed. If we don’t have enough people at a maintenance day and there are significant jobs to do, it might even affect the start of the next voyage, so please do make sure you are available to help!
2024 AGM – a date for your diary
Advance notice that OYT South’s 2024 AGM date has been set for 9th November.
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to the friends and family of the late Brian Mead from our Isle of Wight Support group, for generous donations received at his funeral earlier in the year and passed on to us this week. Thanks also to Fraser Old for another great donation towards bursaries.
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 we can claim back tax on your donation.
Prolific earrings inspired by a crew member – and now NEW necklaces as well!
Exciting news – sales of the earrings based on a drawing by a young crew member have been strong enough that our friends at Vurchoo have been inspired to add necklaces to the range!
£68 in silver or £85 in gold – click the pictures to go to the website and see how to buy them:
You can read the full story here of how the design was based on an idea from a Prolific crew member, with part of the proceeds coming to us to support our charitable work! The original earrings are still available for £40 in either gold or silver – click the pictures to see how to buy them:
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,200 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 over £2,200 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
If you look at the top left of any page on our website, you can click on icons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok. Please share our social media posts as widely as you can – with the help of all our supporters, this charity is doing some amazing work and we need more people to hear about it. You don’t need to do anything more than share a post, or perhaps add a comment which could be as simple as “I’ve sailed with this charity!” or “I volunteer for this charity!”.
Please note that OYT South has a policy that our adult staff and volunteers should not make or accept personal online connections 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!
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 11-25, 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 11-25 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, mate 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.