In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Happy Christmas
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2026 – send in your bids by 1st January! (Including people who earned new volunteer recommendations this year)
- * Refit news – including possible space for another core team member – and farewell and thanks to Bryn!
- Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – TELL US NOW IF YOU ARE STILL PLANNING TO BOOK!
- 2026 voyages – individual bookings for summer 2026
- 2026 adult voyages
- MDL Sail Training Awards – nominate an exceptional young person!
- Maritime bursaries for young people in Suffolk
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- * Financial appeal
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,800 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
* Happy Christmas
Very best wishes to all our volunteers, staff, donors, 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 2026!
* Volunteer sea staff bookings for 2026 – 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 have done a rota for the paid staff and nearly finished booking relief skippers, and we are currently sorting out relief first mates and relief engineers. Once that’s done, 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.
* Refit news – including possible space for another core team member – and farewell and thanks to Bryn!
This is the last refit update of 2025, as the team are taking a well-earned break between Christmas and the New Year!
A big festive thank you to Gotch, Sara, Josh, Jack, Bryn, Joe, Iori Kent, Chris Pryke, Unity Bowns, Millie Hughes, Juno Hollyhock, Tyler Grant and Katherine Chippett, who helped last Friday.
Since the start of refit we have had three full-time core team volunteers in Jack, Joe and Bryn – but Bryn has now got an opportunity for a full-time paid job so we may sadly be losing them. So if you are available from January to March and looking for to spend time with a fun, friendly team as a volunteer learning boat maintenance skills and making a huge contribution towards all our charitable work next season, in exchange for food and accommodation in our refit house, please email refit@oytsouth.org giving your age; some information about any sailing or maintenance experience; and a phone number as well as an email address. More details here. In the meantime, huge thanks to Bryn who has been a fantastic team member – we will be very sorry to see them go but of course wish them all the very best with the job!
So what’s been happening since the last newsletter? Last Friday there was a big deck clean and wash down to get any muck washed away from the week’s sanding and prepping before priming of the bulwark repairs.
The new week started with drying the winch pedestals and laying out deck protection in preparation for painting. The aft winch pedestals by the mizzen got their first coat of primer; and the forward pedestals were prepped to be painted – a big thank you to International Paints for supplying the paint! The bulwarks also received some more priming.
Marine Fire Safety visited Prolific to service the fire fighting and detection systems and took the life rafts away for servicing.
Tuesday saw the return of the rain, so in the morning the team focused on rust busting the engine room cage and walls. Access was made easier using the chartroom hatch, but some gymnastics were needed using the hatch from the galley!
Bryn spent some time on the laptop working on winch spares:
Josh ran up all the systems, checked the seacocks and sorted the workshop. Juno had very kindly cooked a chili for lunch, which went down very well with the team!
Joe went around replacing any bunk latches that needed doing, while the rest of the team were able to get back outside to paint the winch pedestals.
Prolific needed to be moved to allow for some dredging in Ocean Village, so that was the first job of the day on Wednesday.
This was good timing as Prolific is now in a more sheltered spot for the Christmas and New Year period.
All the kit on the pontoon was also moved before the team finished a bit early to get ready for the Christmas party, which was held at the King and Queen pub in the Hamble. 26 people attended, including the office team (current and past), refit team and some of our volunteers and supporters. It was very special to be in the King and Queen again: this is a pub with a long Ocean Youth Club and Ocean Youth Trust history. Two people at the party could remember the 1970s and 1980s when the voyage joining instructions asked people to meet in the King and Queen or in the carpark outside, as the boats in those days lived on pile moorings in the Hamble, and the “K&Q” was almost our clubhouse! Many OYC meetings also took place there. A huge thanks to Janet and her team at the pub for fantastic hospitality and wonderful food.
Yesterday was a very, very wet day, so the team were back down below, continuing with the rust busting before priming. Bryn did some more work on the galley floor:
Jack tackled the list of ‘little’ jobs: in theory some should take only five minutes, but it all adds up and some things took a lot longer. Meanwhile Chris took advantage of the rain and investigated some of the leaks from the deck into the saloon and other areas!
Huge thanks to everyone who has been along to help since the end of the sailing season. The refit is going well but there’s a huge amount to do before mid-March and our staff team and the core volunteers can’t do it all themselves. 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:
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!
Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – TELL US NOW IF YOU ARE STILL PLANNING TO BOOK!
Several courses are now at capacity and even have additional interest, so we are looking at where it is possible to add extra capacity or additional trainers. If you were planning to book but haven’t yet got round to it, please let us know now – you might make the difference in an extra course becoming cost-effective while there is still time to arrange it.
The 2026 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
The 2026 programme is on the website and there is an availability list here.
If you are interested in a 2026 group booking (full boat for up to 15 people), please ask. Most group voyages are already booked or provisionally reserved, but a few clients are still working to raise funds or to see if they have enough interest from young people, so it is still possible that a group voyage may become available if someone else decides they can’t confirm.
However, we have plenty of places in the summer for individuals, where young people can mix with others and hopefully make new friends while enjoying an adventure. If you know anyone aged 11-25 who might enjoy a voyage, please do spread the word. There is a leaflet here which you can print out and share with people, or you can direct them to the availability page or the introduction to sailing with us.
The current list of individual voyages available to book is as follows:
* 4-10 July, Southampton to Poole, 6 nights, age 16-25, £760 per person
* 19-24 July, Brixham to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £645 per person
* 31 July – 5 August, Brixham to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £645 per person
§ 12-16 August, Brixham to Brixham, 4 nights, age 11-16, £540 per person
* 24-30 August, Brixham to Poole, 6 nights, age 11-25, £760 per person – filling very fast!
31 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £540 per person
§ UK-only, aimed at younger people and for those who don’t have a passport. Other individual voyages MAY sail to France if we are lucky with the weather, and therefore passports will be required unless you enquire and we specifically advise otherwise; or we may visit the Channel Islands for which you must have an approved form of ID (please ask) but not necessarily a passport.
* Voyages lasting 5 nights or more are usually suitable for Duke of Edinburgh Award Gold Residentials (provided you don’t know more than 50% of the others in the crew). Four-night voyages, because of the start and finish times, are unlikely to give you enough time on board to meet the Residential criteria. PLEASE ASK if you are at all uncertain about whether a particular voyage is right for your DofE Award, and make certain when you book that we are aware that you are aiming to complete your Residential.
For all these voyages, including those which start and finish in the same place, the exact itinerary is determined only once the young people join the boat, depending on the weather forecast and what everyone wants to do. These decisions are made as a team, with the skipper explaining safe and sensible options for the week, and the young people having a say in the final plan.
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) – almost full – please ask if you still want to book.
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!
MDL Sail Training Awards – nominate an exceptional young person!
Do you know anyone aged 12-18 who you feel should be rewarded for their achievements or inspiration and support to others around them; those who have overcome adverse personal circumstances or shown other exceptional accomplishments? Have a look at how they might be nominated for an MDL Sail Training Award and a voyage in the Easter holiday (no sailing experience needed).
OYT South has worked with MDL Marinas for many years and the Award Winners’ voyage is always a very special experience. This is a chance to support individuals who are facing challenges beyond what any young person should have to deal with, or those who have gone above and beyond to support others. Do please spread the word, nominate a young person if you can, and also make sure that schools and youth groups in eligible areas (the South West, Dorset, Hampshire, Thames Valley and East Coast) know about this programme. Teachers, youth workers and social workers will often know a young person who really deserves this, so it is really worth making sure that those professionals are aware of this opportunity.
Maritime bursaries for young people in Suffolk
Have a look here for details of a funding programme for people aged 16-25 in Suffolk, which could help to pay for a voyage 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 Fiona Pankhurst and to all the people still donating in memory of Kit Power and of Michael Colles.
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.
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,800 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 £2,800 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.