In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Kit Power
- Job advertisement: Bookings Administrator – closing date midday NEXT MONDAY 4th August
- * Voyage news
- * 2025 individual voyages available – LAST FEW places for young people this year!
- 2026 voyages
- * 2025 and 2026 adult voyages
- Volunteer sea staff vacancies – can you help? Including engineer or experienced bosun or replacement first mate for a September voyage
- Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
- Annual Report
- AGM and curry night 2025 – a date for your diary
- Fundraising event in Goodwood House – with Libby Purves – volunteers needed
- Shorebased training weekend February 2026
- Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing as we go on our adventures!
- Prolific maintenance days – help needed
- 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
* Kit Power
We were enormously saddened this week to hear of the death at the age of 91 of Kit Power.
This is truly the end of an era for OYT South: Kit was the last of the generation who established the charity in the 1960s to remain actively involved with us – he was still organising donations and taking a keen interest in the last few months.
He once wrote for us this account of an early voyage with Chris Courtauld, who later founded the Ocean Youth Club with Chris Ellis:
“In the summer of 1958 I had just left university where Christopher Courtauld (who would later co-found the Ocean Youth Club) was a great friend. Chris’s father owned Duet, the beautiful 1912 Linton Hope designed yawl which would form part of Ocean Youth Club’s fleet. Duet had been entered for a race from West Mersea to Ostend and Chris invited me to join the crew. There were six of us, all aged about 24 and we would have with us “Navvy” Mussett. Mussett was Duet’s paid hand, a splendid Essex seaman of vast experience who was surprised by nothing because he had seen it all before.
He told us how as a teenager he had been employed as part of the crew of some vast gaff rigged yacht and was once sent to clear a foul topsail sheet. This involved climbing up the mast hoops, and then working his way along the gaff to the peak. They were sailing downwind and looking down he saw that the owner, on the helm, was looking up at him, rather than paying attention to the course. Mussett saw the leech start fluttering and just had time to get himself on to what would become the windward side of the sail. He managed to hang on when she gybed, all standing.
Mussett did all the cooking on board, and a feature of his cuisine was “sea boot soup”. This was served every evening and came from a stockpot into which went all the day’s leftovers and anything else which came to hand so that the flavour changed slowly from day to day. When a pigeon had landed on board and then disappeared we asked Mussett what had happened to it. He said nothing but just nodded at the stockpot. We never did discover if he was pulling our legs.
Duet made a good start to the race and for most of the day we enjoyed a nice reach in force 3 or 4.
At about 1800 I was on the helm and noticed a strange black cloud low over the sea and bang on our course. “Might be some rain”, I thought, and found an oilskin. Then, incredibly suddenly, we were inside it. It was like night and in the space of a few seconds the wind increased to something I had never seen before – force 10? I just don’t know. We had everything up – full main and mizzen, main topsail, staysail and jib. Duet heeled right over and I remember seeing that most of the guardrail was under water. I tried to head up to spill the wind. The noise was deafening, the rain was torrential and lightning was striking the water all around us. Then there was a bang and I saw the jib describe an arc above the mast. For an instant it streamed aft from the masthead like some vast flag before the mast broke in half above the lower shrouds. Hanging from the remains of the rigging, the upper mast now swept randomly and viciously just above the deck threatening to wipe out anyone caught in its path. The mizzen had blown out on its own, and now at least we had managed to shorten sail, even if it had not quite been done according to the book.
We were all shell shocked and pretty frightened. At this point Mussett, who had been down below preparing supper, appeared on deck, with his beret pulled right down. Hardly ever was Mussett seen without his pipe, and now he made no exception, though he had turned it upside down to avoid the rain putting it out. As usual, Mussett had seen it all before and immediately he made his way to each of us, cupped his hands and shouted into our ears. Afterwards we compared notes as to what he had said – and found he had said the same thing to us all: “Merry old breeze!”. With that reassurance we knew that the world was not coming to an end after all.
Somehow we managed to catch the murderous topmast as it lunged across the deck and the wind left us as quickly as it had arrived leaving an oily swell and devastation on deck. Gradually we sorted out the wreckage, lashed down the broken topmast and started the engine. After a few minutes a hot smell started coming from the engine. We lifted the engine hatch, smoke poured out and dimly we could see something glowing red hot. So we would have to sail and we set about making a jury rig. Somehow we managed to get enough canvas on the stump of the mast to make it to Ijmuiden in Holland. The harbour was full of fishing boats and it was hard to find a berth but we laid ourselves alongside a trawler – only to find that her topsides were covered with wet black paint, so now there was yet more clearing up to be done.
The engine, amazingly, did recover. A torn piece of mainsail had managed to place itself over the water intake. We returned to West Mersea in slow time under our jury rig. The mast was quickly repaired and later that summer I joined Duet again for a cruise to Norway, with that wonderful boat now none the worse for her (and our) adventure. And I now know that it’s best to steer clear of isolated black clouds.”
Kit became a Governor of the Ocean Youth Club and worked tirelessly in support of the charity for many years. Even when he ceased to have a formal role, he was always ready to bring his wisdom and experience to support the charity, and after Ocean Youth Trust South took over from the OYC in our region, Kit brought us contacts, ideas and fundraising advice which played a big part in building up the successful charity we have today.
Kit gave us a link to the spirit of the founders and we always knew that Chris Ellis and Chris Courtauld would have approved of what the modern charity was doing, because Kit told us so. When we bought Prolific and brought her back from Norway, Kit was a natural choice for the welcoming party which went out into the Solent to greet her. Here he is with Jack Dignan who was then our Youth Trustee: aged 18 and 81, they brought the charity’s past and future together in a shared delight in our new boat:
Kit was an Honorary Life Member of Ocean Youth Trust South and always loved being invited on day sails, where – aged 88 – he became the proud holder of the record for the oldest person to go out on Prolific’s bowsprit.
Thanks to people like Kit, Chris Ellis and Chris Courtauld, tens of thousands of young people have had life-changing opportunities to sail.
Kit was a truly lovely man and will be very much missed. Our thoughts are with Penny and the family.
There will be a private family funeral but a later event in the autumn to celebrate Kit’s life. We will write more about that in this newsletter when the time comes, but in the meantime, if anyone has memories of Kit’s time with the charity which we might share, please send to caroline.white@oytsouth.org.
Job advertisement: Bookings Administrator – closing date midday NEXT MONDAY 4th August
Having sadly said goodbye to Susanna Paynter recently, OYT South is hiring!
We are looking for a new Bookings Administrator, based in our Southampton office. This is a part time position, open to contracts for between 25 and 30 hours per week spread over 5 days. See here for details of the role and how to apply. Closing date midday Monday 4th August 2025.
If you would be motivated by helping to ensure that young people have opportunities for often life-changing voyages on board Prolific, and you would like to join our small, friendly and dedicated team, do have a look at the detailed job description.
Please contact us if you want to discuss the role before applying. There may be scope to look at how best this job might fit with other responsibilities such as childcare.
* Voyage news
Last week’s voyage had exceptional weather and abundant wildlife: the west country delivered what was one of the best weeks of the season!
On the first day, after the introductory briefings, they motored to Dartmouth – followed by dolphins.
On arrival in this incredibly picturesque harbour they docked on the town quay and had dinner and played some games on board.
Next morning they woke up to bright sunshine and got under way at 8:30am to leave the quay clear for ferries – heading for Cawsand Bay in Plymouth. They hoisted sails as they left, in very light winds, and drifted along until the wind filled in.
Prolific was fully powered as they approached Start Point.
Cawsand turned out to be a very busy anchorage on this summer evening so they anchored far out and then transferred the crew to the shore for a beach barbecue by the village – this was great fun.
They returned to Prolific in the dark.
The following morning greeted them with some British weather with light rain. They did some theory sessions – we had a mix of crew who had sailed before and were aiming for RYA Competent Crew plus those who were newer to it and working towards Start Yachting certificates. The Competent Crew group put reefs in and out of the mizzen.
By one o’clock the sun came out and the rain stopped. They left the anchorage and sailed to Falmouth in perfect winds – on a beam reach doing about 7 knots the entire way.
They saw lots of dolphins and for a moment even spotted a Minke whale – astonishing as no-one on board had seen one before in British waters.
They approached Falmouth at around 7pm and anchored in a very picturesque spot with a view around most of the harbour. In the morning they took the crew ashore to explore Falmouth.
After lunch on board they left for Fowey.
The wind was light but they made good progress and arrived at around 6pm, rafting up onto another yacht in the middle of the river and to two trot moorings with lines fore and aft. This was a complex operation that took an hour and a half. Then they had dinner and bed as it was already late.
In the morning the young people went ashore to explore Fowey and have showers, and when they returned Prolific set off for Brixham.
The timing was planned on purpose in order to get some night hours! They had a great sail to Start Point and then witnessed the most incredible sunset with dolphins playing all around the boat. The orange light lasted for about three hours and the cliffs in the background faded to black.
They then saw all of the stars in the milky way up above and had multiple shooting stars to enjoy while ghosting along under full sail in 10 knots of wind, doing about 9 knots over the ground at times. It was very peaceful. This trip was excellent.
The voyage finished in Brixham on Tuesday morning after 182 nautical miles, with four people earning RYA Competent Crew certificates and nine RYA Start Yachting certificates.
Their feedback included:
“All of the ports were beautiful, the night sailing with the dolphins and the sky was beautiful as well. Everyone has been great.”
“Best bit: doing the navigation, charts, learning all the new things. The best was the last day as I was very confident with my knots and then going into the night sailing. Beautiful sunset, blood crescent moon, dolphins following us, trimming the sails, picking up the speed and looking out into the Milky Way.”
“Enjoyed all of it, setting the sails, doing the grinding and winching. Thank you everyone for a fantastic voyage. Learnt lots and had fun.”
“Super fun trip filled with chances and new experiences.”
“Learnt many new things, nice staff, good bonding and making new friends. Many fun things. Loved it! :) Most memorable bit: the sunset, the dolphins and taking the helm and steering in the evening at night.”
“Amazing time, it was really nice and we saw lots of dolphins and whales.”
“It was great chance to go boating for the first time and learn new skills.”
“The sailing … doesn’t get much better. Most memorable bit: going out onto the bowsprit and getting the sail ties off the jib as the sun was setting. Never made it out onto a bowsprit before. It was an absolutely brilliant trip and lots of fun. Thank you very much for all your hard work to make the trip possible.”
Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Patrick Kelly, Glyn Collins, Tom Hounsham, Mark Dent, Lucy Mitchell, Niamh Lamin and Erin Misselbrook.
Another individuals’ voyage started on Wednesday and sailed to Dartmouth that night – a lovely sail in good weather. Yesterday they sailed round to Cawsand – there were dolphins and a lovely sunset, but it was a long day and people were in bed very quickly after reaching the anchorage.
Today they are planning to head for Fowey. More on this voyage in the next edition!
Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Brigid Stoney, Sara, Rooby Vaughan-Woods, Rebecca Brookes, Adeana Rowan and Tori Pickles.
We are loving having a new mizzen, bought with help from the Whirlwind Charitable Trust:
* 2025 individual voyages available – LAST FEW places for young people this year!
Our 2025 programme still has a few exciting opportunities to join us this year – please spread the word!
These are voyages for young people who want to join a voyage as individuals or smaller groups, and mix with others:
11-15 August, Brixham to Brixham, 4 nights, age 11-16, £525 per person – only 2 places left
30 Aug – 3 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £525 per person – up to 4 places available tbc.
29 Oct – 2 Nov, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £545 per person – half term -– up to 9 places available tbc.
Other voyages are all fully-booked but there is always the possibility of a cancellation, perhaps even at the last minute if someone is ill, for example. So do please let us know if you would like to go on a mailing list to be contacted about short-notice vacancies.
Email voyageadmin@oytsouth.org to ask about individual bookings.
2026 voyages
Do you know a school or youth club or another organisation which might like an exclusive booking for 12-15 people?
The 2026 programme is now available on the website but at this early stage it is still subject to changes. If you are interested in a 2026 booking, please ask.
* 2025 and 2026 adult voyages
This year’s October adult weekend (10-12 Oct, Southampton) now has a waiting list – email for details or to be added to the list.
2026 volunteer 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)
Volunteer sea staff vacancies – can you help? Including engineer or experienced bosun or replacement first mate for a September voyage
These are the spaces still available this season – please let us know if you can help with anything.
Berths listed for “trainee mates” or “trainee bosuns” MAY be suitable for people who earned new recommendations last year or this year to join our volunteer team, even if you have never sailed in a staff berth before – please ask whether any particular vacancy might be appropriate for you.
Dates on this list are when young people are on board – please note that we normally need volunteers the afternoon before, to help get everything ready.
15-19 Sept, Southampton – engineer or qualified bosun, or a replacement 1M so Sara can switch to the engineer berth. The volunteer booked in the engineer role for this voyage needs to drop out for urgent personal reasons but might consider a swap with someone on a later voyage if you can manage this date but can’t spare the time in addition to other voyage commitments!
27-30 Sept, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
1-5 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
6-10 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
14-19 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
And we have a first mate sailing on three voyages (1-5 Oct, 20-24 Oct and 24-28 Oct) who can still do them if needed but would be happy to step aside if another 1M could take on one of them?
Contact caroline.white@oytsouth.org if you would be interested in sailing on any of these voyages.
For those who are new to the process, do please remember that if you commit to a voyage booking then we do really need you! Sometimes people assume that with several staff and volunteers on each voyage, it won’t be a problem to drop out; or you may think that if you’re not a qualified volunteer, you are not essential to the voyage. But in practice, we need a certain number of adults on every voyage in order to be able to sail – and you may, for example, be the only female member of sea staff on a voyage which has girls in the crew. It’s quite possible that a voyage can’t go ahead without you, which is why we need to avoid people dropping out and if it is absolutely unavoidable, we need as much notice as possible. It is also why we appreciate you all and the time you give to the charity very much indeed!
Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
If you are planning a gap year, or you are between jobs or for any other reason potentially available for several weeks or months this winter, might you be interested in joining our full-time refit team? We will need a couple of full-time volunteers between November and March. More details here. Plenty of our previous refit volunteers have gone on to great jobs in the marine industry – it really helps to have maintenance experience as well as good sailing skills when applying for sailing jobs! And any refit volunteers who want to sail in Prolific can be offered berths as watchleaders, bosuns, or relief engineers. So it’s a great way of developing useful experience, contributing to a good cause, securing free food and accommodation for a few months, and having a positive experience with a fun group of people! If you’re interested, please read the web page and email us with the details requested at the bottom of the page.
We’ll also need lots of casual volunteers helping for a day, a few days or a weekend, but we can get people booked in for that much nearer the time – at this stage we are really just thinking about the core team.
Annual Report
OYT South’s Annual Report and Accounts for the last financial year is now available. Do have a look! It’s packed with information about the charity and highlights from the last season. If you want to know more about who’s who – Patron and Vice-Patrons, Trustees, staff, honorary life members – or where the money comes from, how it’s spent and what difference it makes, you can find all that in the Annual Report.
AGM and curry night 2025 – a date for your diary
Our AGM and social evening will be 8th November – save the date! You can see the details and book your curry here.
Fundraising event in Goodwood House – with Libby Purves – volunteers needed
If you enjoyed the recent article in the Times about us by Libby Purves, come and hear her speak!
Thanks to our friends at Ned’s Fund there will be a fundraising event for OYT South on Thursday 6th November in historic Goodwood House – save the date and we will let you know when tickets go on sale. We will also need two or three volunteers to help on the night – handing out drinks and leaflets – is anyone interested? Email caroline.white@oytsouth.org.
Shorebased training weekend February 2026
Next year’s OYT South training weekend for staff and volunteers will run from 7pm on Friday 6th February to 4pm 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.
We will announce a schedule and prices in due course, once we have a full programme, but we can already confirm that we will be offering the RYA First Aid course (updates required every three years – check when yours goes out of date) and an accredited Mental Health First Aid Awareness course. We’re also hoping to have something on sail repairs, splicing etc.
We are still interested in your suggestions for other courses. Is there something you would really like us to cover? It might be something new, or something we have done before where you would like a refresher – we have enough new volunteers that it is fine to repeat topics every few years. Or are you an instructor, or someone with expertise in a subject that might interest our staff and volunteers – could you offer to run a session? Please let us know your suggestions!
Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing as we go on our adventures!
Prolific is away from our home base in Southampton for the summer!
You can always have a look and see what we’re up to. This site updates every six hours so don’t worry if the vessel doesn’t appear to be moving! There are other sites (like Marine Traffic) which update more often; but especially for families of a young person on board, the tracking on our site allows you to have a look two or three times a day and see what’s going on.
Prolific maintenance days – help needed!
We have planned maintenance days this season on the following dates – please put them in your diary and email us if you can help. Skilled and unskilled tasks available – or maybe a chance to learn a new skill. Over-18s only, please, except for 16- and 17-year-olds who have sailed with us already and been recommended to return as volunteers – you MAY be able to attend maintenance days with the skipper’s permission depending on what jobs we are doing.
Friday 22nd August – Brixham
Monday 13th October– Southampton
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
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. This week we heard from a volunteer who 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.