In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Happy Christmas
- * Training weekend in February – open for bookings! Please note accommodation MUST be booked by 10th January
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2025 – send in your bids BY 1ST JANUARY! (Including people who earned new volunteer recommendations this year)
- * Pip Hare’s Vendée Globe race
- * Refit news and help needed
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- 2025 programme – bookings open for group and individual voyages
- * Financial appeal
- * Farewell Jo Clark – Volunteer and Membership Manager – please contribute to her leaving present
- Prolific earrings and necklaces inspired by a crew member – ideal for Christmas!
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,400 through Easyfundraising!
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Happy Christmas
Very best wishes to all our friends and supporters who have done so much for us this year, as well as to all the young people who took part in our voyages. We look forward to involving as many people as possible next year and doing all we can to ensure that sail training continues to have a lasting positive impact on the wellbeing of young people in 2025!
* Training weekend in February – open for bookings! Please note accommodation MUST be booked by 10th January
OYT South’s 2024 shorebased training weekend will take place on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd February 2024, at a new location in Botley. Full details, timing, prices and a booking form for courses, accommodation and meals now available here.
Please make sure your accommodation bookings are with us by January 10th – that’s the cut-off date for the venue!
The weekend is open to staff and volunteers hoping to sail with us next season (including experienced sea staff, new volunteers and those who earned volunteer recommendations in 2024), but occasionally we could do with extra people to make up the numbers on a particular course so even if you aren’t likely to be sailing with us in 2025, do let us know if there is something you would like to join.
If you haven’t yet started volunteering with us but are hoping to do so, please do come along to the weekend – it’s a lot of fun and a great way of meeting other volunteers and OYT South staff. You will be made very welcome and we hope you will find the training interesting and useful. If you need advice on which courses are most appropriate for you, please ask.
Once you have submitted the booking form, we will get back to you to confirm there is space for you on your chosen course(s) and we will invoice you for the correct amount.
Saturday is Youthwork Day, with sessions from Halima Mehmood on working with young carers and recently bereaved children; and – back by popular request – Jennie Hogan’s wonderful session, last offered in 2019, on child development and how early experiences can shape teenage behaviour, and how we can support young people who are struggling on board. There will also be an update from our safeguarding team. The whole day will be useful for all our staff and volunteers – even those who have heard Jennie before.
On Sunday you have a choice. There are two options for all-day courses – RYA First Aid and RYA Radar (if we have enough people we can always add a second First Aid course on the Saturday, since there is a maximum of 12 spaces per day). For those who don’t need either First Aid or Radar, we have a morning of sessions with the office team plus Brigid Stoney on playing games on board – different games for different purposes and how to feel more confident if you are sailing as a volunteer and are asked to keep a young crew occupied during an evening in harbour! If you are not doing either of the all-day courses, you’ll be able to leave after lunch – or you have one more option for the afternoon: the practical session and exam for your GMDSS certificate (radio licence). Please note that in order to do this you must sign up for an online course to be completed BEFORE the weekend, taking around 6-10 hours.
On Saturday evening there will also be a session with OYT South’s Chief Executive Mark Todd, reviewing 2024 and looking forward to the 2025 season, followed by a dinner and social evening – all welcome.
* Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2025 – send in your bids BY 1st JANUARY! (Including people who earned new volunteer recommendations this year)
Please send in your bids for sailing next year!
This is NOT first-come, first-served and it will be something we work on over the winter. If you possibly can, get your bids to us by 1st January – either dates when you would like to sail, or details of the maximum number of days you can offer and any dates you can’t manage.
The process is that we’ve been working on a rota for the paid staff and relief skippers, and the next step is to book relief first mates. (First mates: please do get your availability to us as soon as you can). After that we’ll look at a few other priorities (e.g. for training and assessment to senior levels) before allocating teams of people to fill the other roles on each voyage.
For those of you who haven’t been through the process before or can’t remember, here’s a quick run-down:
It really helps if you can look at the sailing programme when sending in your availability. There’s no point, for example, telling us you are available from 6th to 13th August – that’s half of one voyage and half of the next so there’s no complete voyage you can do!
Qualified sea staff (anyone who has previously sailed with us as a watchleader, bosun or engineer) and anyone who has already sailed as sea staff but is partway through training and assessment – ideally please give us voyage numbers of anything you would like to do (see here for voyage numbers); or give us names of any regular clients you’d particularly like to sail with; or simply tell us the maximum number of days you can offer in 2025 and any times of year you can or can’t manage. Please be specific: “voyages in university holidays” only works if you tell us your exact holiday dates!
If you have NOT already sailed as sea staff but you HAVE had a skipper’s recommendation (which means that EITHER you have sailed on a youth voyage and been told at the end that you have been recommended to come back for bosun or watchleader training, or you have done an adult voyage and been given a recommendation at the end) but are not yet an assessed and qualified member of sea staff, your next step is to sail on a youth voyage of four nights or more, for further training and assessment (after which you can do other voyages next year). Not all voyages are suitable for this but please send in details of your availability and we’ll aim to match you with an appropriate voyage.
There is paperwork to be completed before you can sail (DBS, references etc) so if you want to sail as a volunteer in 2025, please make sure you are in touch with seastaffadmin@oytsouth.org about your paperwork. We won’t normally consider volunteer voyage bids from anyone who hasn’t started their paperwork or isn’t making good progress with getting it completed.
Please note that we DO need you to send in details of when you can sail and how much time you can offer – please DON’T email to ask what voyage dates are available. The reasons for this are complicated but we will try to explain the process just to help people understand how complex it is for us to get the volunteer bookings organised!
Essentially, it’s not simply a question of finding dates that work for individuals and then just booking you. What we have to do is put together a TEAM of staff and volunteers for each voyage, with a skipper, 1M, 2M, 3M, bosun and/or engineer and often but not always a trainee mate or bosun, and we can’t book anyone until we have at least some idea of who else is going to make up each team. For example, at least one adult on each voyage must be a woman, if there are girls in the crew; and then we have to think about special skills if the group includes people with disabilities or challenging behaviour. We also don’t want to end up with a voyage where too many of the volunteers are all newly-qualified at their particular level – each trip should include some people who are comfortable and familiar in their roles and therefore hopefully able to support others who are new to their own role. Then sometimes the client will be a school or charity where a staff member has qualified or wants to qualify as a volunteer, so needs a staff berth. Meanwhile, some client groups are just not suitable for brand-new trainee mates. Plus we have to think about some priority bookings (e.g. people who have been identified as potential first mates or skippers, if we can give them enough time on the boat). And we do promise that people who help the most with other things like refit or raising money or introducing us to new clients will be higher up the list to get their choice of voyages.
On top of all that we want to try to be fair to all our volunteers and make sure everyone gets at least a voyage or two! No point confirming voyages for someone who is really flexible only to find that they have taken the only dates that would have worked for someone else who has limited availability.
We hope that explains things for you – we really need to get bids in from as many people as possible before we can start the allocation process and it will take until January before we can start confirming bookings for every voyage. If you really need an answer more quickly than that then please tell us your deadline and we will do our best for you.
Once the main round of allocations is completed we will advertise any remaining gaps, but you may find there’s not a lot of choice at that stage. Please send bids or questions to webmaster1@oytsouth.org.
* Pip Hare’s Vendée Globe race
OYT South is a very proud Official Supporter for Pip Hare in the Vendée Globe singlehanded race around the world, so we were heartbroken this week when Pip’s race was ended by a dismasting in the Southern Ocean. Do have a look at Pip’s video from Monday for sheer courage and emotional honesty in the face of devastating disappointment:
Pip is safe and making her way slowly to land under jury rig. Here’s a video from yesterday which is the perfect example of someone picking herself up from disaster and focussing on what needs to happen to move on – including some real ingenuity and DIY emergency sailmaking. As Pip says at the end: “One step at a time. One hour at a time. One job at a time. Melbourne, we’re coming … but don’t wait up! (You can see OYT South’s logo on display in the cabin in this video – hopefully when Pip sees it she will know that we are backing her all the way):
And here’s today’s video:
You can still see regular updates on her Facebook page and YouTube.
We send all best wishes to Pip and everyone on her team who worked so hard for this race.
Pip remains the most incredible inspiration, as Prolific’s crew who were lucky enough to meet her and tour her boat in the summer will remember:
* Refit news and help needed
This week, refit on board Prolific has been very busy with lots of big tasks being achieved!
The team dropped the outboard at Bursledon Outboards, who will be servicing it for us. Pressing Needs collected all of the bunk cushion covers, to give them their annual, much needed, clean. (Does this photo make anyone else think of the Princess and the Pea?)
In the sunny moments, the team have been prepping and painting the winch pedestals, as well as the inboard end of the bowsprit, and have been doing other bits of deck work such as whipping and seizing. They’ve also re-attached some of the winches, and reviewed and organised all of the spare winch parts carried on board during the season.
Work continued in preparation for the tanks to be lifted out – this involves removing everything on top of them that might get in the way, including pipes and floorboards! On Tuesday, Osmotech came down to Prolific and lifted several of the tanks out, and were able to access and test the keel bolts that were beneath them. Here’s how it is done!
The saloon looks very different to how it is during the sailing season!
Marine Fire Safety have also been to visit Prolific this week, where they have helped with a full check of all the fire equipment carried on board, as well as testing all of the fire alarm panels.
Our wonderful volunteers have been mainly occupied in cleaning the hull, in preparation for antifouling in the new year. Various methods have been employed to clean the most barnacle-y bits along the waterline, including using a second scaffolding tower to reach the high places, but the final solution has turned out to be a scraper attached to a very long stick!
Today is the final day before the team finish for Christmas, so as well as enjoying some Christmas tunes while they work, and of course some mince pies, they are finishing the year with a big clean and tidy of the boat. A huge thank you to all of the wonderful staff and volunteers who have helped with refit this year, and in particular to Josh, Sara, Seb Dickson, Iori Kent and Anita van Nierop, who have been working on Prolific this week.
Refits go through cycles – some in the water, some out of the water, some with more technical work – and some, like this one, with a lot more labour-intensive jobs! We will REALLY need as much volunteer support as we can get, and there are jobs for skilled and unskilled people as well as those who want to learn. Refit volunteers normally need to be aged 18+ and you can come for a day, a weekend or much more (accommodation permitting). One thing to pencil into your diary now is a possible antifouling weekend 18-19 January when we will need a really big team – more on this as we get closer to the time.
More details about our refit here – please email refit@oytsouth.org for more information about how you can come and help, and to book yourself in. We aim to make it fun and sociable as well as getting through lots of work. And we’re always happy if anyone turns up with snacks and goodies!
For our sailing volunteers, refit is a chance to get to know bits of the boat you might not see during a normal voyage, and to improve your understanding of how things work. And where there are several volunteers all wanting to sail on the same voyages – especially the popular dates in the summer – then helping at refit (as well as raising money or introducing us to new bookings) is a great way to improve your chances of getting some of the voyages you want – we always try to recognise those who have helped us over the winter.
Merry Christmas from the refit team!
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Open for 2024 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 one of the charity’s founders. You can also see some previous winning entries.
2025 programme – bookings open for group and individual voyages
Our 2025 programme is open for bookings, 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 more in the summer holidays 2025.
30 June – 6 July, Southampton to Le Havre, £735 per person, 6 nights, age 15-25,. Ends with time at a Tall Ships festival – an amazing experience with the fleet!
6-12 July, Le Havre to Dunkirk, £735 per person, 6 nights, age 15-25 – 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!
30 July – 4 Aug, Brixham to Brixham, £630 per person, 5 nights – standard youth voyage for individual bookings.
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 this 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 or the availability list for other individual and group voyages (and contact us to be added to the mailing list as we designate additional dates for individual voyages).
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to Kit Power and Felixstowe Master Mariners for very generous donations.
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.
* Farewell Jo Clark – Volunteer and Membership Manager – please contribute to her leaving present
Very sadly we have to say goodbye to Jo who has been working for the charity since 2018 but has decided she needs to spend more time with her husband who is working overseas.
Jo joined us in 2018 as Operations Assistant and has worked for the charity in several posts, including Admin Manager, before becoming part-time Volunteer and Membership Manager, in which role she became the key person for looking after our volunteer sea staff. (The email address seastaffadmin@oytsouth.org is still in use and will be looked after by other members of the office team for the time being).
Jo has brought a fantastic blend of efficiency and creativity to the role over the years – do have a look at some of the short stories she contributed to illustrate our Sail To Wellbeing programme!
Jo has played a great part in the successes of the charity in the last six years, which of course included the very challenging period of the pandemic and all the joys and complications of returning to sailing after that. We’ll be sorry to lose her and we wish her all the best for the future.
If you would like to contribute to Jo’s leaving present, there’s a donation link here.
Prolific earrings and necklaces inspired by a crew member – ideal for Christmas!
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 £2,400 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 £2,400 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.
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.