In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * AGM report
- * Refit news
- * 2025 season highlights
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2026 – send in your bids now! (Including people who earned new volunteer recommendations this year)
- Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – bookings open
- 2026 voyages – bookings for groups and individuals
- 2026 adult voyages
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- * Financial appeal
- Michael Campbell – thanksgiving service NEXT MONDAY 17th November
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,700 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking! NB we are now on Bluesky instead of Twitter/X
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* AGM report
Ocean Youth Trust South’s AGM for 2025 was held last Saturday in Southampton, with a good turnout – it was lovely to see lots of people there.
Apart from approving the accounts and reappointing the accountants, there were votes involving some key people in the charity. Our rules require a third of our Trustees to resign each year but they can offer themselves for re-election. This year we said goodbye to two very long-serving trustees who stood down and did not stand again.
Ben Martin joined the Board in 2008 as our second-ever Youth Trustee but stayed on the Board once he was no longer in the Youth Trustee age bracket (25 or under, the same age range as young people sailing with us). He was a long-serving first mate and went on to become a member of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers with a wide range of professional skills which were valuable to the Board, as well as a deep commitment to the charity. He served on the Board for 17 years in total and remains a great friend to the charity.
Eamonn Feeney did twelve years on the Board, having joined us in 2013. He was Chair from May 2017 to April 2023. As a chartered accountant and former Managing Director of MDL Marinas, Eamonn brought genuine expertise in finance and general management issues and played a huge part in setting up the modern structure for the charity’s finances and financial planning.
We wish both Ben and Eamonn a happy retirement from the Board and all the best for the future, with huge thanks for everything they have contributed over such long periods.
Richard Griffiths, Lesley Robinson and Lee Mosscrop also had their turn at standing down in rotation but were all re-elected this year.
We also elected for the first time Andrew Page, who was co-opted during the year. Andrew is a second mate who teaches at Costello School, Basingstoke and brings groups to sail, and he has joined the Board in order to keep us in touch with the needs of the education sector.
You can read about them and all our other trustees on the website here.
Previous editions of this newsletter have covered the sad news about the deaths this year of two key OYT South figures, Kit Power and Michael Campbell. The AGM passed the following resolution:
“To record deep appreciation for the invaluable contributions made to the charity by Kit Power (Honorary Life Member) and Michael Campbell (Vice Patron) who sadly died during the year.”
Finally, we appointed a new Honorary Life Member to the charity: Jonathan Pinnock, known as JP. He first sailed with us as a teenager and credits OYT South for having shown him that his dyslexia and his struggles in school need not define him because he has so many other skills, both personal and practical, which eventually led him into running a successful business. He now donates oil and other things for Prolific’s engine, funds bursaries for local young people, and acts as an ambassador for the charity. Here he is (pictured left) after delivering a speech for us to the Seven Seas Club:
In many ways JP stands for all the young people whose lives have been changed by sailing with OYT South and we are very proud to have him as an Honorary Life Member. Our other Honorary Life Members are Emma Ellis, Jonathan Cheshire, Brian Eyres, Sally Croly, Chris Lane, John Parkin, Lindy Chamberlain, Fred Cole, Marion Heming and Graeme Cole.
The AGM was followed by CEO Mark Todd’s speech reviewing the year, which as ever was inspiring, moving and humorous by turns, and then 28 people went for curry in a local restaurant!
* Refit news
We’ve had our first volunteers’ refit weekend of the winter!
Huge thanks to Josh, Sara, Gotch, Jack Thompson, Juno Hollyhock, Iori Kent, Tyler Grant, Matt Roe, Penelope Herschel, David Butcher, Niamh Lamin, Madeleine Ould, Simon Ould, Dominic Ould, William Robinson, Jude Grenyer, Neil Grenyer, Unity Bowns, Cathy Lacey and Bryn Marsh.
On Saturday they spent some time fitting the new sail covers to figure out how they worked best, before taking the sails off, folding and bagging them and then putting them in the store. They also started a store tidy, and tidied the boat above and below decks. Everything came out of the deck boxes and various compartments down below and was checked, binned if necessary and otherwise cleaned and stored tidily.
On Monday Josh, Jack and Sara sorted all the lifejackets and sent the first batch off with Lynne to be serviced by Ocean Safety. Rob from Kemp Sails came to pick up all our sails from the store and any sail covers that needed adjusting. Josh did some more refit planning and Sara worked on our social media archives.
The next few days were spent on staff training with Gotch, Josh, Sara, Jack Thompson and Steve and Cathy Lacey. On Tuesday they worked on recovery techniques for a man overboard from the bowsprit, taking notes and pictures so this can be shared with other sea staff in due course.
They also worked on how to rig a tow line; and had a safety committee meeting and cleaned the bilges!
For the next couple of days we had Alex and Scarlett from Elevated Safety running a working aloft course. This included theory, safety and protocols in the classroom plus practical training on different methods of going up and down the rigs, more man overboard recovery from the bowsprit, risk assessments and different scenarios and recovery methods.
The core refit team for this winter will be joining next week so we will introduce them properly once they are with us!
Our staff team have worked so hard all year and delivered a great season but they can’t just relax now as there’s a lot to do this winter. PLEASE help them if you possibly can – even if you just turn up for a day or so here and there to help with some cleaning or fetching and carrying; or perhaps by buying some of the small refit items and materials we need; or dropping off some morale-boosting goodies to the workers. Just email refit@oytsouth.org to see how you can help. If you can offer more time or genuine expertise, that’s fantastic; but don’t ever think you won’t be valued and appreciated for a smaller offering – even a gesture or a supportive message can be just what the team needs if it’s cold and wet and the job they are tackling is proving difficult!
Dates for your diary! We’ll be looking for help on refit weekdays but for those of you who can only come at weekends, these are the dates when we’re currently planning for the team to be working and needing loads of support:
29th and 30th November – aiming for this to be topside painting and capping rail repairs. Call the boat on 07990 518915 if you can help.
17th and 18th January – no specific jobs list yet… watch this space!
7th and 8th March – post-refit clean, and sails and kit back on board
There won’t be a refit weekend in February because we have the training weekend.
Email refit@oytsouth.org if you can help. Refit volunteers should generally be aged 18+ but if you are 16 or 17 and have already received a recommendation to come back and train as a volunteer, it’s always worth asking as we may be able to include you.
No experience needed – plenty of unskilled jobs and plenty of skilled jobs which we can teach you!
* 2025 season highlights
There is a document on the website covering some of the best quotes, facts and figures from the 2025 season: do have a look!
Prolific sailed 5,522 miles this year (the furthest since 2018).
94% of crew berths were actually filled but 97% were booked or allocated (some clients want an exclusive booking even if they don’t end up bringing the full 15 people, and a tiny number of people dropped out too late to be replaced).
62% of crew berths on youth voyages went to people with some form of disadvantage and another 5% to essential accompanying staff.
199 people in crew berths declared some form of physical or learning difficulty or mental health issue.
522 people completed Outcomes Wheel sheets at both the start and the end of their voyage. 455 (85%) saw their scores increase over the course of a voyage and 22 showed no change (including some who gave themselves full marks at the start and end). Just 55 scores fell (10%) but everyone can give reasons for their end-voyage scores and a proportion of people showed reduced scores for understandable reasons such as not having got on with some of the other young people, or a fall in “looking after myself” due to night watches, broken sleep and lack of showers!
Average changes during this year’s voyages included:
| % change | |
| Feeling confident | + 24% |
| Working in a team | + 15% |
| Learning new skills | + 16% |
| Coping with new experiences | + 15% |
| Getting on with people | + 10% |
| Dealing with setbacks | + 18% |
| Compromise & negotiation when living with different people | + 14% |
| Learning from experience | + 14% |
| Communication (speaking and listening) | + 14% |
| Looking after myself | +9% |
We filled 264 volunteer berths, with volunteers giving 1,170 days to make these voyages possible.
27% 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.
404 people earned RYA Start Yachting certificates, and 21 earned the more advanced RYA Competent Crew certificate.
One person passed a skipper assessment this year, alongside 2 new first mates, 7 second mates, 9 third mates and 3 bosuns.
All of this was only possible due the efforts of staff, volunteers, donors, sponsors, trustees and other supporters, and the document on the website shows how much difference you made to young people this year. Huge thanks to all involved – do have a look at the highlights document and feel very proud, however you contributed.
* Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2026 – 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 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 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 2nd to 9th 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 2026 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 2026, please make sure you are in touch with seastaffadmin@oytsouth.org about your paperwork.
Please note that with only six voyages falling in school summer holidays and normally only one trainee volunteer berth per voyage, we are often significantly over-subscribed for these berths. Young people aged 16-25 with sea staff recommendations who cannot sail at other times of year MAY be allocated to a crew berth rather than a staff berth so that you can develop your familiarity with Prolific and our routines – as a better option than not sailing at all due to the shortage of trainee volunteer berths. We have funding to help cover the cost of those crew berths as needed. Please send in your volunteering availability as described here and we will let you know how berths can be allocated. The expectation is that young trainee volunteers allocated a crew rather than a staff berth should be aiming to learn as much as they can, seeking responsibility where possible and setting a good example to others just as they would in a staff berth. Those who do well in this position are more likely to be offered staff berths in future.
If you have NOT yet had a skipper’s recommendation but have, for example, volunteered at refit or booked on the April mates’ training weekend in the hope of gaining your recommendation there, we MAY be able look at provisional voyage bookings for you, especially if you have been involved in other OYT South activities (such as refit) and impressed the skipper, or if you apply for voyages where we are short of current recommended volunteers.
For everyone: 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.
Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – bookings open
Next year’s OYT South training weekend for staff and volunteers will run from 7pm on Friday 6th February to 4.30pm on Sunday 8th February at a new venue, Foxlease Park, Clay Hill, Lyndhurst, Hampshire, SO43 7DE. As last year, all accommodation and meals will be available on site. Accommodation will be in bunk rooms.
This weekend is open to current staff and volunteers as well as new volunteers who have started the process of getting involved with us and are hoping to sail on our voyages next year.
See here for details and booking form.
Saturday 7th February
0900 – Welcome / housekeeping
0930 – Youth Mental Health First Aid Awareness
1230 – Lunch
1330 – Behaviour Buddy – strategies for managing behaviour
1430 – Office update (Booking system/ membership consultation)
1530 – Tea/coffee Break
1600 – Safeguarding
1700 – Free time
Sunday 8th February
0900 – First Aid OR Sail Repair (these are both full-day courses)
1230 – Lunch
1330 – First Aid OR Sail Repair continued
1630 – Finish
Time TBC – GMDSS
GMDSS involves an online course which MUST be completed in advance, followed by a short practical session and exam on the day, to get your radio licence.
Price list
This year we have simplified things – instead of a separate price for every course, meal and overnight stay, we can offer all-inclusive prices as well as some separate options. The booking form is available here, but prices are shown below for information.
Whole weekend including sail repairs – £120
Whole weekend including first aid – £150
Day rate (including lunch) – £50
Day rate plus dinner and evening – £65
Just First Aid (including lunch) – £80
GMDSS – £40 course fee plus separate exam fee (cost tbc – currently £76 but it may increase in January) payable to the RYA
Optional add-ons
Bedding and towels – £7
Friday evening meal – £5
2026 voyages – bookings for groups and individuals
Do you know a school or youth club or another organisation which might like an exclusive booking for 12-15 people? Are you looking for an individuals’ voyage in the summer holidays?
The 2026 programme is now available on the website and there is an availability list here. If you are interested in a 2026 booking, please ask.
2026 adult voyages
2026 adult weekends are open for bookings:
24-26 April 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
9-11 Oct 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
These weekends are ideal for people who want to find out more about the possibility of volunteering with us – but you are also welcome if you simply want to come along and enjoy a sail on board Prolific!
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Open for 2025 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.
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to the Pointer Family Trust for a superb refit donation; and to other donors who choose to remain anonymous. Many thanks also to Antony Metcalf, Peter Haig, Sarah Haig, Charles Spence and others making donations associated with our Goodwood Ned’s Fund event last week.
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, bank transfer 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.
Michael Campbell – thanksgiving service NEXT MONDAY 17th November
We recently reported the death of our lovely vice patron Michael Campbell. There will be a Thanksgiving Service for Michael’s life in Winchester Cathedral at 11am on Monday 17th November. All OYT / OYC people very welcome but his office is trying to keep a track of numbers so if you wish to attend, please confirm to office@elliscampbell.co.uk.
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,700 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
We mention Easyfundraising in the newsletter each week and we’re really grateful to those people who are using it regularly, but there must be people who haven’t looked at it, or often don’t remember to do it.
Here’s what it DOESN’T do:
- Require you to buy from sources you wouldn’t normally use
- Take lots of time
- Ask you to do anything complicated at all!
- Produce donations so small you would barely notice
- Cost you a penny!
You simply have to buy whatever you already planned to buy online, from whoever you choose to shop with – but having signed up with Easyfundraising, just click to accept a donation if it’s offered when you shop. It’s often a percentage, which means the donations can be really significant for bigger items – a holiday, a flight, an expensive train ticket etc. For example, one volunteer got a £17 donation when renewing their home insurance. Someone else earned nearly £10 from a VistaPrint order. A few donations like that from a hundred supporters and it starts looking like a really significant total each year.
Do tell us if you’ve got a really good donation from something you bought – these stories help to inspire others. Maybe you even order things online for business purposes and your employer would agree to donate to us like this – at no cost to them but a way to feel good every time they need new boxes of business cards or train tickets to get staff to a conference!
It takes a minute or two to sign up to Easyfundraising: 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, often including the site you would normally choose to use for all your rainbow unicorn requirements – and it doesn’t cost you anything, you pay the same price you would pay anyway.
PLEASE click the link now and sign up!
We have already raised over £2,700 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South social media – please share as well as liking! NB we are now on Bluesky instead of Twitter/X
If you look at the top left of any page on our website, you can click on icons for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok.
We have now updated the social media links on our website, replacing Twitter/X with Bluesky – please come and join us there!
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.