In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Training weekend 1st-2nd February
- OYT South office staffing
- * Refit news and help needed
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- 2025 voyages available – – individual and group voyages for young people, and adult voyages
- Funding help if you want to take part in a voyage
- * Events needing volunteers
- * Financial appeal
- Please contribute to Jo Clark’s leaving present
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,400 through Easyfundraising!
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Training weekend 1st-2nd February
OYT South’s 2025 shorebased training weekend will take place on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd February 2025, at a new location in Botley.
We are very much looking forward to seeing all the people who have booked to join us at the weekend. You should all have received an email with joining instructions and details of what to bring – please do read it carefully and let us know if you have any questions.
If you think you have booked something at the weekend but haven’t received your copy of the joining instructions, please email office@oytsouth.org.
OYT South office staffing
Unfortunately we’re short-staffed just for the moment and there’s a lot to do just now, including things which can’t be put off, like all the organisation for the training weekend. Please bear with us if you need to contact us as it may take longer than usual to deal with emails etc. If you really need an answer to something, you can always put “URGENT” in the subject line, but otherwise we’ll just get to it as soon as we can!
* Refit news and help needed
Huge thanks to everyone who has helped at refit, including the recent volunteers’ weekend: Gotch, Sara, Josh, core team volunteers Sasha and Seb, plus Anita van Nierop, Chris Pryke, Tom Knight, Andy Gissing, Graeme Cole, Linnéa Johansson, Unity Bowns, John Hicks, Katie Hamlet, Aoife Harrington, Halima Mehmood, Rob Jelley, Keri Hammond, and new addition to the core team Shan Pielok-Luby. Here’s Shaun:
Shaun says: “I’m just starting my life and career in sailing. I wanted to gain experience in the winter season and do something I’d be proud to be a part of. The missing of OYT South is something I can deeply relate to and they were generous enough to give me an opportunity to be a part of what they do.”
Thanks to all these people, we have done lots (and lots and lots … ) of sanding; cleaned the hull off after sanding; put masking tape along the waterline, and started priming. We have also done some keel repairs, and Vortec did some work on the rudder.
The team has also been cleaning the tanks inside the boat (big thanks to BD Marine who pressure-tested them for us):
There has been a clean of the deep saloon bilges; rust-busting and painting of the saloon tank bilge bearers; Chris and Josh have continued to service the seacocks; Gotch, Seb and Anita have started work on the mast; and Kemps has picked up the jib from the store.
Sara says it has been very cold but there have been fun times and a lot of hot chocolate with marshmallows!
We massively appreciate everyone who has been to help – everything we achieve with young people in the sailing season depends on having the boat in good condition, and every single refit helper should feel very proud of the part they have played.
There’s still loads more work to do – please email refit@oytsouth.org if you can spare any time at all, or text Gotch or Sara or you have their numbers, or contact them via the sea staff WhatsApp groups. Age 18+ only, please.
We’re just in the process of working through sea staff bids for voyage berths this season, and helping at refit (as well as raising money or introducing us to new clients) is a great way of making sure you are in our thoughts if you have applied for some of the really popular voyages where there is a lot of competition for places.
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! And 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.
* Volunteer sea staff bookings
Many thanks to everyone who sent in details of your availability to sail on our voyages this year. We are just working through the voyage allocation and very soon we will have emailed all the qualified watchleaders and bosuns with details of the voyages we can offer you, and then we will move on to the new and trainee volunteers. Please bear with us as the whole process does take a while. Sometimes we need a reply from one person before we can book others for the same voyage – for example if it affects whether we need male or female sea staff in any remaining berths – so if you have had your voyage offer, do let us know as quickly as you can whether you can accept it or whether you might have any problems with the dates we’ve listed for you.
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!
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Anyone else want to submit an entry? We could still allow a few last-minute entries and it might be just what you need to get some funding toward one of the more expensive voyages this summer – maybe even the Tall Ships Race!
If you have enjoyed a voyage with OYT South and want to come again (and are aged 11-25), please think about entering for this award. You can win up to £500 off the price of another voyage, by sending in an account of a voyage you have already done with us. It can be a logbook, diary, story, pictures, video – anything which gives the judges an idea of why you had a good time and would like to come again. The prize is judged at the end of each season and the award can be spent on a voyage the following year. Entries should be emailed to webmaster1@oytsouth.org or posted to the office. See here for more details of this award, which was set up in memory of one of the charity’s founders. You can also see some previous winning entries.
2025 voyages available – individual and group voyages for young people, and adult voyages
Our 2025 programme has plenty of exciting opportunities to join us this 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 batch of individual voyages for this season (we will add more later) including some more in the summer holidays 2025:
30 June – 6 July, Southampton to Le Havre, £735 per person, 6 nights, age 15-25,. Ends with time at a Tall Ships festival – an amazing experience with the fleet!
6-12 July, Le Havre to Dunkirk, £735 per person, 6 nights, age 15-25 – this is a Tall Ships Race with a fantastic festival at either end – a truly exciting adventure and a chance to create memories for a lifetime!
30 July – 4 Aug, Brixham to Brixham, £630 per person, 5 nights – standard youth voyage for individual bookings.
11-15 August, Brixham to Brixham, £525 per person, 4 nights, age 11-16. A lot of our individual voyages attract keen young sailors, over-18s, people doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and people wanting to test themselves with a challenging adventure; and, weather permitting, longer passages such as Channel crossings. But this doesn’t suit everyone! So for next year, we have designated this one shorter coastal voyage as a gentler opportunity, ideal for the younger end of our age range (11-16-year-olds) and passports not required. If you know anyone who is unsure about coping with a more ambitious voyage and wants an easier introduction, this is the voyage for them!
See the 2025 programme or the availability list for other individual and group voyages (and contact us to be added to the mailing list as we designate additional dates for individual voyages).
We also have adult weekends (18+, no upper age limit) as follows:
2-4 May, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £265 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
10-12 Oct, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £265 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
Come and enjoy sailing our beautiful boat, or maybe find out what it takes to become a sailing volunteer. We may add a longer adult voyage once we can see any weeks which aren’t needed by youth groups.
* Funding help if you want to take part in a voyage
Are you aged 15-25 and wanting to take part in the Le Havre to Dunkirk Tall Ships Race (see here) but needing help to afford it? Have a look at the Oman Bursaries scheme and see if you might be eligible to apply.
If you have sailed with us in the past and earned a recommendation to join our volunteer training programme, you can ask us about funding towards a crew berth on the race or another of the more ambitious voyages which isn’t suitable for a brand-new inexperienced volunteer in a staff berth. The Gipsy Moth Fund is only open to people aged 16-25 who have had a volunteer recommendation from one of our skippers. You just need to tell us which voyage you want to do and how much you can afford to contribute, and we’ll see if we can fund the shortfall.
If you sailed with us last year but aren’t involved as a trainee volunteer (including under-16s) consider the Chris Ellis Award.
We also have a standard bursaries programme open to anyone aged 25 or under who wants to sail with us but can’t afford the full cost, whether or not you have sailed with us before, with grants available from a range of different donors. To apply, you need to email us with details of any personal circumstances relevant to why you can’t afford to sail without help; what you want to achieve and why you want to take part; which voyage you want to do (or some options for different possible voyages); and how much you can afford to contribute. You need to think hard about what, if anything, you can raise – bursary applications won’t be considered if they simply ask how much you can have, or request “as much as possible”: your application has to come after serious thought about anything else you can put in. This doesn’t mean we can’t grant 100% bursaries in exceptional circumstances, but we would need to understand why. Our funds are limited and if one person gets a very large grant, someone else may get nothing at all, so it’s important only to ask for as much as you genuinely need.
* Events needing volunteers
This year Prolific will be open to visitors at the South Coast Boat Show in Ocean Village on the weekend of 10th-11th May, and at the Gosport marine festival on 17th May. We will need lots of people to show visitors around the boat and talk about our work – please put the dates in your diary and contact webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you are interested in helping!
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Vokins Trust, for another very generous donation.
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.
Please contribute to Jo Clark’s leaving present!
Very sadly we had to say goodbye to Jo who left us before Christmas. She had been working for the charity since 2018 but decided she needs to spend more time with her husband who is working overseas.
Jo joined us in 2018 as Operations Assistant and has worked for the charity in several posts, including Admin Manager, before becoming part-time Volunteer and Membership Manager, in which role she became the key person for looking after our volunteer sea staff. (The email address seastaffadmin@oytsouth.org is still in use and will be looked after by other members of the office team for the time being).
Jo brought a fantastic blend of efficiency and creativity to the role over the years – do have a look at some of the short stories she contributed to illustrate our Sail To Wellbeing programme!
Jo played a great part in the successes of the charity in the last six years, which of course included the very challenging period of the pandemic and all the joys and complications of returning to sailing after that. We’ll be sorry to lose her and we wish her all the best for the future.
We’ll keep Jo’s leaving present fund open for a little while longer – if you would like to contribute, there’s a donation link here.
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,400 through Easyfundraising!
“What a fool I was!” says Mark Todd.
“For ages I’ve seen in the bulletin that Easyfundraising is a good way to raise money for charity, but I never got round to doing anything about it, and when Caz told me how easy it was, I didn’t listen.
I thought it might be a hassle, or that I’d have to remember to do something when I bought stuff online, or that it probably wasn’t really worthwhile.
This week I finally got round to it and it turns out it’s a REALLY EASY way to raise money for the charity I care about … and I definitely should have done it sooner.
It takes a minute or two to sign up; you can do it on a desktop, tablet and/or phone, and you can install a widget that flags up when a donation is available. Once that’s done, imagine you’re looking to buy – say – a rainbow unicorn: just put “rainbow unicorn” in your usual search box, and the list of results shows you which sites come with donations, and how much. It’s up to you what to pick and whether to accept the donation from the site, but a huge choice of sites will offer a donation – and it doesn’t cost you a penny.
I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner … but if there’s anyone else who has been like me and just not got round to it, PLEASE click the link now and sign up!”
We have already raised over £2,400 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
If you look at the top left of any page on our website, you can click on icons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok. Please share our social media posts as widely as you can – with the help of all our supporters, this charity is doing some amazing work and we need more people to hear about it. You don’t need to do anything more than share a post, or perhaps add a comment which could be as simple as “I’ve sailed with this charity!” or “I volunteer for this charity!”.
Please note that OYT South has a policy that our adult staff and volunteers should not make or accept personal online connections with crew members aged under 18, or vulnerable adults. Crew members can use the sites to stay in touch with the boat and with each other, but not with individual staff and volunteers.
New readers’ welcome and introduction
If you have recently registered your interest in OYT South, welcome to our newsletter, which is sent out almost every week, normally on a Friday, and is also copied onto the website.
If you have just started receiving this newsletter by email, it is because we believe you have signed up and consented to receive it – perhaps by emailing us to ask for it, completing a form on our website, or adding your email address to the book on board where people can sign up to receive news, as well as leaving comments. If this was a mistake or you simply decide you want to stop receiving the newsletter, just press “reply” to the email and write UNSUBSCRIBE at the top, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org asking to unsubscribe.
Each week the newsletter includes a wide range of news from the boat and from the charity, including details of voyages available for young people; adult voyages; opportunities for adult volunteers both ashore and afloat, and much more. We find that while some people read the bulletin almost every week, many others dip in and out, and read it when it’s convenient – which is why some items are repeated. New items are marked with an asterisk * so that if you did read it last week, you can see which sections you can safely skip.
Please feel free to join in any OYT South activities – nothing here is restricted to long-standing members or people who already know one another. New people are always very welcome!
If you need an introduction to the work of OYT South, you should find a lot of useful information on our website. But essentially, we are a registered charity (no. 1079959) which exists to offer adventure under sail as a personal development opportunity for young people aged 11-25, from the widest possible range of backgrounds. A high proportion of our young crew members are disadvantaged or deserving in some way: many of these sail in groups organised by other charities, youth clubs, special schools and so on, and will fill the bulk of our term-time voyages. But those from more fortunate backgrounds are also welcome to sail, either in groups or by coming as individuals on a mixed voyage. Every year we run a variety of shorter local voyages plus longer adventure trips – sometimes including Tall Ships races during the summer holidays. If you are aged 11-25 and hoping to sail as a crew member, take a look here – and this section is also useful for adults who are thinking of organising a voyage for a young person. Adults planning to organise a full group voyage should also see here. Adults who want to sail themselves should see here.
We have a professional staff skipper, mate and engineer, but our watch leaders are normally all volunteers, who combine sailing skills with an interest in working with young people. You can find more information here – how the system works, how to join, and profiles of existing staff and volunteers.
To volunteer for OYT South ashore, please see here. To help with the vessel’s annual refit, see here.
It is a very expensive business maintaining a boat, running an office and employing staff. If you want to help us, please become a member of OYT South. Or see here for information on making a donation.
If you have any questions, please do email – or contact the office.
Receiving this newsletter by email
Many thanks to all those who have given consent to receiving this newsletter by email. If you are not currently getting it by email and would like to, please just click here Newsletter Subscribe and press “send”, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org.