In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *

• * Voyage news – end of a great season!
• * End-season facts and figures
• * Farewell Lauren, welcome Sara!
• * Refit news and help needed
• * Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2025 – send in your bids now! (Including people who earned new volunteer recommendations this year)
• * 2024 AGM report
• Training weekend next February – a date for your diary – and suggestions needed for courses
• Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
• * Official Supporter of Pip Hare in the Vendée Globe race! 
• 2025 programme – bookings open for group and individual voyages
• * Financial appeal
• 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!
• Branded clothing
• New readers’ welcome and introduction
• Receiving this newsletter by email

* Voyage news
It’s been a while since the last newsletter (I’ve been on leave!) so this issue goes right back to the end of the season at the beginning of November. The previous issue left a crew from the Royal Cruising Club enjoying a Hallowe’en party in Portland:

Next morning dawned with the crew aiming was to sail to Cowes, and the young people practised their knots and got involved in planning a pilotage exercise through the Needles channel.

As they left harbour they hoisted the sails, but the wind was still too light to sail. The young people got really involved with running the boat through the day, and a rota for ‘watch leaders’ and ‘navigators’ was created to give everyone the chance to lead. They proceeded to motor until halfway back to Cowes, where the wind filled in and they managed to sail for a couple of hours.

It got completely dark as they were approaching the Needles channel. The young people worked as a team to navigate past the Needles, they did an excellent job, were engaged with the pilotage and spotting buoys. The evening ended by arriving at Cowes at 9pm, followed by hot chocolate and showers before bedtime.

Saturday started with some theory sessions, allowing the crew to work towards their RYA Start Yachting certificates, and they also went through some more complex navigation, for those who had more extensive sailing experience already.

At midday they set off from Cowes, heading into the eastern Solent. Because it was a Saturday, the Solent was very busy with lots of yachting traffic, which the crew coped well with. They finally had some stronger winds, and so they hoisted a reefed mainsail and mizzen, and after lunch, the staysail too. They did some tacking practice in the Solent, and then dropped the mizzen and main before motor sailing through the North channel and back towards Southampton.

The final approach to Southampton was spectacular, as the sun set and the crew were able to enjoy an unrivalled view of the fireworks going off on the shore! They arrived back in Ocean Village, where they had dinner, played games, and enjoyed the last evening of their trip. The final morning involved a big clean-up, and a chance for the crew to reflect on the full voyage, before they departed.

They sailed 167 nautical miles and you can see their complete voyage track here. Feedback included:

“Great voyage, I really liked the layout of the watches and our watch leaders, and the trip really helped me to connect with other people on board as well … My best bit was going on a bowsprit in the sun.”

“My most memorable bit was doing the anchor watch at midnight.”

“Lots of fun, would definitely recommend, the crew was great fun and everyone was amazing!”

“Amazing voyage! I met so many new people and learnt all kinds of things by the sea staff who were easy to talk to and learn from.”

Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Lauren, Willoughby Matthews, Nige Bush, Katie Hamlet and special congratulations to Orlan Cronin who was signed off as a third mate, and even more special congratulations to Michelle van den Bergh who managed the unprecedented feat of completing two assessments on one voyage. A few weeks ago she passed a first mate assessment but she still needed to complete one more exercise, which she did on this this voyage alongside also doing her bosun assessment!

That was followed by our usual end-season day sail with staff from MDL Marinas, our major sponsors. It was great to be able to show them what they support means to us and to give them a real insight into what young people do on board.

Their feedback included:

“Great day with dedicated OYT staff – such a valuable cause.”

“Who thought sailing in the Solent in November could be so much fun!”

“I had a fantastic day, both in terms of sailing and socially. I enjoyed getting to know MDL staff I had not met previously – and hearing the crew’s stories was very interesting.”

“I had a great day with great company. It is a great teambuilding event, and to learn about the great job you do!”

Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Josh, Glyn Collins, Patrick Kelly, Willoughby Matthews, Orla Cronin, Nige Bush, Katie Hamlet and Sara Abdur.

And that was the end of the 2024 sailing season!

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* End-season facts and figures
Huge thanks to staff, volunteers, trustees, patrons, sponsors, donors, suppliers and everyone else whose support contributed to making 2024 such a successful sailing season. Here’s a little of what you helped us to achieve:

• We ran a full programme of 40 voyages and 10 day-sails from March to November.
• Prolific sailed 4,781 miles during the 2024 sailing season.
• We had 671 crew berths available this year (up from 639 last year) and we allocated 664 of them (99%). 634 people actually sailed in crew berths (up from 578 last year). Berth occupancy this year was therefore 94.5%. The difference between berths allocated and actually occupied is mainly due to clients not actually filling as many berths as they had booked (and, in many cases, paid for), usually because they wanted an exclusive booking even though their group was smaller than 15 people – often where the young people had issues in common and it would have been inappropriate to include outsiders on their voyage. There were also a few last-minute dropouts.
• The average age of people in crew berths on youth voyages, excluding over-25 teachers, leaders and carers, was 15.
• 67% of people in crew berths on youth voyages had some specified disadvantage and another 8% were adults essential for disadvantaged young people to sail (e.g. carers and support staff). 159 people on youth voyages and another 28 on adult voyages or day sails had some form of physical or learning difficulty or mental health issue.
• 479 people completed pre- and post-voyage Outcomes Wheel self-evaluation sheets giving themselves marks out of 6 in different areas. Average changes during this year’s voyages included:

• The biggest changes of the year were seen on an individuals’ voyage in July where the average total start-voyage score across all 10 measures was 42.13 and by the end of the voyage it had gone up to 55.47 – an improvement of more than 30% across the board, including all 15 young crew members! There were also huge changes for some of our group bookings, with nine groups all showing collective improvements of more than 20% averaged across all ten measures, and many more not far behind. 410 people showed an improved total score while 28 showed no change (9 of whom gave themselves full marks on everything at the start so had no room for improvement). That leaves only 41 people whose scores fell – and even that isn’t always a cause for concern. There were some whose comments on the end-voyage sheet made clear that a big fall in “looking after myself” was due to not showering every day! Others learned to trust sea staff over the course of a voyage and were more open to giving themselves an honest appraisal at the end.
• We also filled 278 volunteer berths, with volunteers giving 1,254 days to make these voyages possible. A third of volunteer berths were filled by people aged 16-25, almost all having sailed first on an ordinary youth voyage and impressed the skipper enough to be invited back for further training.
• 604 berths in total were filled by people aged 25 or under, including staff, volunteers and crew.
• 338 people earned RYA Start Yachting certificates, and 46 earned the more advanced RYA Competent Crew certificate. We always stress to young people and the staff working with them that these certificates represent much more than basic sailing competence: they can be used as evidence of transferrable skills. To earn a certificate, young people have to be able to listen, concentrate, work in a team, persist where they initially struggled, contribute to cooking and cleaning as well as the more exciting jobs, cope with living in an entirely unfamiliar situation and being away from home, undertake tasks which some will have found really challenging, take responsibility when asked, and much more.
• 52 people did well enough to earn a recommendation to come back and train as volunteers on our voyages, and another 63 were told they had shown the potential to reach this level when older or after a few more voyages – though in practice we don’t expect everyone to take up their recommendation, and training berths will go those who are most keen and committed. Excluding adult and mates’ training voyages, and recommendations going to teachers, youth workers or other group leaders, 31 sea staff recommendations went to young people sailing on standard youth voyages.
• Two people passed skipper assessments this year, three first mates, three second mates, fifteen third mates and three bosuns.

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* Farewell Lauren, welcome Sara!
Lauren is now off sailing on her voyage from the Canaries to Cape Verde and on to the Caribbean as part of the ARC+ after her two seasons with us as Staff Mate. Here she is in Cape Verde:

They are now off on the next leg and you can find Lauren on board Coconut on the fleet tracker here. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to her leaving present – we bought her a big picture of Prolific and covered the costs of some courses she wanted to do! We all wish Lauren the very best of luck.

Her successor as Staff Mate, Sara Abdur, has had a busy time lately, completing her Coastal Skipper course, Yachtmaster Theory, Medical First Aid and Medical Care On Board Ship – and a scaffolding course! She also went to The Sail Training International Conference in A Coruna, Spain, to talk about her experiences in sail training as part of a session on diversity. She’s now back and spreading her usual positivity and enthusiasm across the refit and we’re delighted to have her as part of the team.

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* Refit news and help needed
Refit kicked off in earnest with a big maintenance weekend on 9^th and 10^th November. After bribing lots of volunteers to come along with the promise of the AGM and curry social event on Saturday night, everyone was put to work getting Prolific refit-ready!

A large portion of the weekend was taken up with fitting and testing our new sail covers. This involved hoisting the sails, reefing them, lowering them, hoisting them again, and lowering them yet again, in order to find any snags in the set-up. A huge thank you to Kemp Sails for helping us with the sail covers, which we hope to have in place for the start of the next season. These are really important because, sadly, there has been a big increase in the rate of UV damage to sails in recent years. By protecting them, we hope to extend the lifespan of our sails – and that will save a great deal of money, given the cost of our sails.

After the sail covers were fully tested, they were removed along with all the sails (apart from the jib), and with lots of volunteers helping, they got them all flaked neatly and taken to the store. Everyone who wasn’t involved with the sails on deck was busy down below, stripping the boat of non-essentials! They removed the bunk cushions, books and games, kitchen items and more, taking everything to be stored safely in the refit house.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped at the weekend: Gotch, Josh, Sara, Sasha Taylor, Theo Bennison, Keri Hammond, Steve and Cathy Lacey, Patrick Kelly, Mariana, Sandy Garrity, Glyn Collins, William Robinson, Lee Mosscrop, Orla Cronin, Emily Sharpus-Jones, Brigid Stoney, Aoife Harrington, Niamh Lamin, Unity Bowns, Kirsty Rosenfeld, Linnéa Johansson, Iori Kent, and Anita van Nierop.

After the maintenance weekend marking the start of the refit so productively, the team set to work, getting ready for the masts to come out. The halyards were moused, sail battens were taken to the store, and the waterproofs were checked and sorted before being taken to the office for safekeeping – they’ve not yet been washed and re-proofed, so excuse the smell!

The tables and floorboards were removed from the boat, and taken to be stored – and potentially revarnished – for the winter. The life rafts were taken off and went to the store, as well as lots of the deck bits that aren’t needed during refit.

Refit seemed to be truly non-stop, and the following Sunday Prolific was moved down to Victoria Quay, in order to have her masts taken out.

Our wonderful volunteers helped take the mizzen boom, and jib off, and the mast electronics were disconnected. Monday brought the long-awaited moment, and the main boom, mizzen mast, and main mast were all taken off – thank you to Vortec Marine for helping us with that! That afternoon the team slipped at Victoria Quay and brought Prolific back to Ocean Village.

Tuesday brought with it a scaffolding course for Gotch, Josh, and Sara, who are now preparing the scaffolding towers needed once the boat is lifted out of the water.

Later that week the team helped move the boat from Ocean Village round to Saxon Wharf, where the boat will be lifted soon (weather permitting!). As always, a huge thank you to MDL for supporting us with berthing in Ocean Village throughout the season, and now for finding us a place in Saxon Wharf (just round the corner from our new office in Shamrock Quay) to be lifted out for our refit.

This week everyone has been working hard preparing for the lift, and Josh has been working on making sure that the tanks are all accessible, as they will need to be removed in order to access the keel bolts later. The rest of the team have been doing a big clean of the boat, installed protective flooring, serviced all the winches, and have been working to organise the workshop too – not a small feat!

Regular readers will know that we usually take on some full-time refit volunteers who join for several months or even the full refit, with food and accommodation provided in exchange for invaluable boat maintenance experience which has opened up all sorts of doors in the sailing industry for some past core team volunteers – while others have remained firm friends of the charity, working or volunteering for us for many years.

The core team this winter includes Sasha Taylor who says “I’m Sasha and joining OYT South this winter as a volunteer on the core refit team! Having spent much of the year sailing on board different kinds of boats, I’ve been really enjoying getting to know Prolific as we take her apart bit by bit. Through helping with the refit, I’ve been able to meet some great sailors, and learn a lot about what is involved in maintaining a ship of this size. The refit has been great so far, and I’m really excited to see Prolific in the water with sails hoisted when we finish the job in Spring!”

A second core team member joined yesterday. Seb Dickson says: “I’m Seb, I’m an engineer with a background in robotics for fusion energy reactors but having accidentally won a car in a competition, sold it and taken a year out travelling. I’ve just got back from cycling across Africa and having grown up by the sea dinghy racing, getting my hands dirty on a refit seemed the perfect mash up of things that interest me.”

As well as Sasha, Seb and the staff team of Gotch, Josh and Sara, huge thanks to all the other volunteers who have given us some of their time over the last three weeks: Anita van Nierop, Chris Pryke, Keri Hammond, Steve and Cathy Lacey, Emily Sharpus-Jones, Iori Kent and Nige Bush.

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 – as the next section says!

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* Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2025 – send in your bids now! (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 1^st 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 will do a rota for the paid staff and book relief skippers, and then go on to booking relief first mates. (First mates: we’ll email you separately to tell you where the gaps are once the paid staff rota is finalised – no need to send in bids till that’s sorted). 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 6^th to 13^th 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) and we will give priority in bookings to people who have completed or made good progress with this, ahead of people who haven’t started or have delayed with it. 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.

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.

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* 2024 AGM report
Huge thanks to all who came to our AGM and Curry Night earlier this month, and special thanks to Lesley Robinson and British Marine for letting us hold the AGM in their office, as well as to Lynne Robbins who did a lot of the organising.

Ed Bishop, Penny Scott-Bayfield, Steve Lacey and Ben Martin were all re-elected as Trustees; and we recorded thanks to Sara Abdur who stepped down as Youth Trustee due to joining the charity’s staff. Unity Bowns was elected as the new Youth Trustee and now has a new email address: unitybowns@oytsouth.org. Unity is the voice of young people at Board level, influencing the decisions and direction taken by the charity, and any young people (crew members or volunteers) with ideas, suggestions or concerns can email them.

We also welcomed four new Honorary Life Members. This is designed to recognise people who have done outstanding work for the charity but are not any longer in a position to be so actively involved. This year’s additions were:

Lindy Chamberlain: the first woman staff skipper (not quite the first female skipper) for the Ocean Youth Club, back in the 1970s and is still a big supporter today, with a fund in memory of her late husband Tony (also a staff skipper) providing bursaries for disadvantaged young people.

Fred Cole: a trustee for 14 years, including four years as Chair. When he worked at International Paint he was key to building up the relationship we have today; and he has continued to give invaluable technical advice and support at refits when he can.

Marion Heming: ran the Isle of Wight Support Group for more years than anyone can remember, raising money, finding young people … and also providing flapjacks and other support if we ever went into Yarmouth!

Graeme Cole: a first mate with the Ocean Youth Club and therefore a first mate from the very first days of OYT South. Back in those days the charity was desperately short of volunteers and even shorter of really skilled volunteers and qualified first mates. A tiny handful of people like Graeme did a huge amount of volunteering to get us through that period. It’s no exaggeration to say that OYT South would never have got off the ground without the commitment of people like Graeme, and he played a vital role in building the charity we have today. He started talking about retiring about ten years ago – but then we bought Prolific and Graeme was excited and inspired all over again – he was one of the team who went out to Norway to help bring Prolific to her new home. Sailing Prolific kept Graeme involved for years beyond what he might otherwise have intended; but he has now retired as an active first mate!

The AGM was followed by a speech by CEO Mark Todd, and then the curry night!

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Training weekend next February – a date for your diary – and suggestions needed for courses
Our usual February shorebased training weekend is being planned for 1-2 February next year – in a new location! Now we no longer have an office in Gosport, we have looked at other locations and we have found an option near Botley where we could offer all courses plus affordable accommodation in shared bunk rooms.

We are aiming to offer the RYA first aid course as usual, as well as GMDSS assessments and other things including the very welcome return of Jennie Hogan whose outstanding session on understanding challenging behaviour in teenagers we last ran in 2019.

We’re open to suggestions for what else we might organise. What other topics would you particularly like us to cover? Is there a course you could run that you think might be of interest to sea staff? It could be a full day course, a half day – or just an hour. Please contact lynnerobbins@oytsouth.org with ideas and offers!

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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.

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* Official Supporter of Pip Hare in the Vendée Globe race!
Regular readers will know that thanks to our mutual links with the Pointer Family Trust, OYT South has been chosen as an Official Supporter for Pip Hare in the Vendée Globe singlehanded race around the world.

Pip is firmly in the top half of the fleet as they head for the Cape of Good Hope. There’s a leaderboard and a tracker on the race website, and news stories here. Anyone used to passage planning at an average of perhaps 6 knots might like to consider the incredible speeds achieved by these racing sailors, on their own and day after day. One of the race leaders has just set a new record for the number of miles covered in 24 hours, in a monohull and solo: 615.33 miles. That means averaging more than 25 knots, solo, for a whole day and night.

Pip’s blogs give something of the flavour of what this experience feels like. Do have a look at Pip’s social media, she has a lot of videos and updates on Facebook and you can find Pip Hare Ocean Racing on other social media platforms.

We are very proud to be supporting Pip and we hope that when she sees our logo in her cabin, it will remind her of what an incredible inspiration she is to young people – both those who are already keen sailors and those who might be encouraged to try sailing.

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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 in the summer holidays 2025.

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!

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).

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* Financial appeal
Huge thanks to Steve Trew, Margaret Sellwood, the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, the estate of the late Valerie Tehel, and another donor who prefers to remain anonymous, 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.

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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:

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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