In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Annual Report
- Job advertisement: Bookings Administrator
- * Voyage news
- * 2025 individual voyages available – individual bookings for young people
- 2026 voyages
- 2025 adult voyage available
- * Volunteer sea staff vacancies – can you help? Including engineer or experienced bosun for a September voyage
- Newly-recommended young volunteers (aged under 25)
- Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
- 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
* 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.
Job advertisement: Bookings Administrator
Having sadly said goodbye to Susanna Paynter a couple of weeks ago, 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
The last newsletter ended as our crew from George Green’s School was leaving the boat. Their feedback included:
“From this voyage I learned to WORK HARD. REST LATER! … Thank you for putting up with me :) The experience was unique but nice and I learned new things. Most importantly discipline and independence.”
“Such an amazing experience that I will carry with me forever! Thank you so much for everything. My love for sailing has only grown. The tacking was really fun. Definitely. Thank you for letting us invade your boat for a week without throwing us overboard. You fed us, guided us and trusted us not to crash anything major and somehow made us seasickness and 1AM wake-ups fun.”
“It was such a pleasure to stay with Prolific! I would definitely recommend and stay again. Thank you so much for everything. TIP: BRING SEASICKNESS TABLETS!! + make sure to sleep during the night. Best bit: putting the sails up and taking down the mizzen by myself … You straight away trusted us without a doubt … thank you for teaching us with patience even if we didn’t get it the first time.”
“The BEST experience of my life. The crew and sea staff were amazing and everyday was full of fun … Note: always make Mark (skipper) a coffee. Best bit: all the group activities that we have done, whether that be washing up, playing Uno or cards. Just being together.”
“It has been a very fun experience learning how to sail. Thank you staff for being kind and being helpful!”
“Awesome trip. Will come back :). Most lasting memory: the sail back to Poole, it was really pretty and we had nice conversations and the pilotage was fun.”
“Super duper cool, loved it, will be back!!”
“Best bit: seeing the views and being in the middle of the ocean. I found that fun.”
“Fantastic time. Love to come back. Good crew. Loved the music during Happy Hour. Best bit: being navigator. I liked controlling where people went.”
“Best bit: staring at the night sky when sailing.”
“Thank you for staying on your boat and taking such care of me and when I felt sick as well, I really appreciate letting us experience going through the English Channel it’s a blessing to do.”
And from the staff member who sailed with them:
“Best bit: getting to Dunkirk was brilliant when we actually got on the boat and we saw what that festival was like and seeing all those amazing ships and you guys having some free time and just doing all of that was really great. Another best bit was a couple of time when I looked around the table and everyone was having such a lot of fun and getting on with people and making new friends … Thank you for your brilliant youth work! and for taking such good care of us.”
This week’s crew was made up of mixed individual bookings, all aged 16-18 and the majority doing their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award residential.
They started off in Poole in such hot weather that they had to rearrange the introductory briefings to allow for extra water breaks!
Soon they were heading out of Poole:
They anchored in Studland Bay for the first night, with a nice sunset and sausage and mash for dinner. Watchleader Tom organised a game of Spoons (no serious injuries …)
The following morning was packed, with a speedy breakfast and clean up, and then when leaving the anchorage with a man overboard recovery drill – the rain tipped down for the 15 minutes that they were all outside! Then they divided into watches and headed out across the channel! There wasn’t much wind, but everyone got used to helming and lookout duty (and, in some cases, to coping with seasickness).
They arrived in Alderney around 4pm, dropping sails and anchoring. Everyone went ashore; some to the shops, some to swimming, some to just have a walk around. They had pasta with roasted veg for dinner and small groups played cards.
The following day was planned to be a later start, with relaxed morning and then shore time and some learning sessions – but the weather had other ideas! At 11am after a short team meeting it was decided that setting off back across the channel was the best idea, and after a very early lunch they hoisted sails in harbour and left quickly.
The crossing was a little uncomfortable, with more people sea sick, but ended in a lovely sunset off the English coast:
First mate Glyn took what might turn out to be the wildlife shot of the season – here’s the original photo and then zoomed in:
The passage ended with night navigation into Dartmouth using sector lights. Dart Nav very kindly reserved the town pontoon for them, and they finished the evening after midnight with apple crumble and custard, and hot chocolates before bed.
The crew went ashore in the morning and the sea staff took the boat upriver to get fuel, doing a quick pick-up back on the town pontoon. They left Dartmouth and tacked (many times) in Start Bay:
Finally they ducked round the corner into Salcombe. Their mooring buoy in Salcombe was well upriver near the main fork, and they swam off the boat and had showers.
The crew watched Moana 2 and all except one fell asleep!
Following a late-ish start the following morning, they planned a navigation exercise; Green watch in charge from Salcombe to Dartmouth, and Red watch from Dartmouth to Brixham. The young people really stepped up and took a lead here with almost no teaching/prompting from sea staff required!
Josh then ran sessions to show the crew the engine room and how we carry out daily checks, before people were picked up by the water taxi for shore time in Salcombe … ice cream and lots of fudge!
In the afternoon they set off to carry out their navigation plans:
Both watches hoisted sails and got involved with tacking and gybing. They did brilliantly and learnt lots, improving as their time went on.
After arriving in Brixham they had fajitas; a big communal meal that was a huge hit and worked well for everyone. The evening consisted of a giant game of cheat and luxury hot chocolate with marshmallows. The voyage ended on a high for everyone!
They sailed 193 nautical miles and you can see their voyage track here. Sixteen people earned RYA Start Yachting certificates.
Comments included:
“Great experience with amazing strangers. Great and very challenging but worth it.”
“I had an amazing time working as a team and getting to know everyone! Improved my confidence so much and my love for sailing! Thank you for an amazing time :) Best bit was making and eating the fajitas last night. They were really nice. Most memorable bit: navigating as a team and steering, that was pretty fun.”
“Great experience, great trip, great people. Will come back if I can.”
“I learnt so much and would love to come back. Best bit: coming back from Alderney, we could just see the land and I had a cup of tea, my book and I was sat on a bean bag up there with the sunset and the dolphins.”
“Fun experience. Saw lots of new places and met lots of nice people. Best bit: coming into Dartmouth harbour, all the lights.”
“Very fun and something new! :)”
“Most memorable bit: being on the bean bags and being the only one awake at the end. Everyone I’ve got to know cuddled around, it was really wholesome.”
“Steering into Dartmouth at night was quite something.”
“Most memorable bit: the atmosphere we had as a crew here. Everyone kind of clicked amazingly and very quickly.”
Big thanks to sea staff James Boyce, Josh, Glyn Collins, Unity Bowns and big congratulations to Tom Hounsham who was upgraded to second mate and clearly has the potential to go further if he wishes, to Peter Taylor who is a new volunteer signed off as third mate this week, and to Aaron Thomas-Epstein who has completed the journey from young crew member by qualifying as a bosun!
* 2025 individual voyages available – individual bookings for young people
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. Aimed at younger crew members and anyone without a passport. 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 this voyage has been designated as a shorter coastal voyage and a gentler opportunity, ideal for the younger end of our age range (11-16-year-olds) and passports not required. Ideal for anyone who is unsure about coping with a more ambitious voyage and wants an easier introduction. Only 2 places left
30 Aug – 3 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £525 per person – 6 places available.
29 Oct – 2 Nov, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £545 per person – half term -– places available.
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 adult voyage available
We have one remaining voyage this year for adult individual bookings:
10-12 Oct, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £265 per person, weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
All welcome – but the weekend is particularly useful for anyone who is thinking of joining our sailing volunteers for 2026, and wants to find out more! Email for details or to make a booking.
2026 volunteer adult weekends are:
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 for a September voyage
Whether or not you already have voyages booked as a volunteer this season, these are the spaces still available – 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!
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!
Newly-recommended young volunteers (aged under 25)
Have you sailed on a voyage this year and been told at the end of the voyage that you have earned a recommendation to join our young volunteers’ team and train as a bosun or watchleader on board, or have the potential to do this after another voyage or two? If you have had one of these recommendations, it will have been clear from the email you should have received from our office after your voyage.
We have a fund which can help young people in this position to do some extra sailing, especially if you would have struggled to afford it, in order to build up your confidence and familiarity on board Prolific. Some of this funding is available for this voyage:
30 Aug – 3 Sept, Poole to Southampton
If you are available and think you might be eligible, please get in touch!
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.
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.