In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Voyage news
- * Volunteer sea staff vacancies – can you help?
- 2025 individual voyage available – LAST FEW places for young people this year!
- 2026 voyages
- 2025 and 2026 adult voyages
- Fundraising event in Goodwood House on 6th November with Libby Purves – NOW ON SALE! Details (and volunteers needed)
- Kit Power Thanksgiving Service 16th October
- 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
- Shorebased training weekend February 2026
- Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing as we go on our adventures!
- * Prolific maintenance days – help needed – just one date left this season
- 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 almost £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
* Voyage news
The last newsletter left a crew of individual bookings aged 12-16 sailing back from the Isles of Scilly. They had already enjoyed a lovely sunset and a warm clear night with incredible views of the stars. They saw bioluminescence in the water, lighting up the outlines and wake of dolphins swimming alongside.
By Thursday morning they were sailing along with the cruising chute up:
They saw plenty of dolphins:
They arrived in Brixham late that evening , and the voyage finished next morning after 275 nautical miles – the longest of the season so far! – and you can see their full voyage track here.
Feedback included:
“It was an incredible trip! Saw lots of dolphins and even a whale! Lots of funny moments … Loved the Isles of Scilly with turquoise water and swimming.”
“So fun. Learnt loads (winching, knots, parts of boat). See good sights (pretty Scillies, so stunning, dolphins and whales). Made friends – everyone so nice + great watch. Despite the choppy time and all the night watches and stuff it didn’t naturally feel long enough so I’d like to come back. Most memorable bit: actually on the helm, steering the ship because it had a lot of power and stuff and it was really fun.”
“I had such a great time and met lots of great people as well! We saw lots of dolphins every day and even saw a whale! I also loved seeing the stars and even shooting stars in a meteor shower! I also loved swimming in the sea and having lots of laughs!”
“It was very fun and I am happy I came. I enjoyed helming the boat.”
“Such a wonderful trip. I had an amazing time and had lots of fun whilst deepening my sailing knowledge. Thank you sea staff. I can’t wait to come again.”
“Best bit: getting to the island and going in the water and it being turquoisey. Most memorable: the night watch as I really liked seeing the shooting stars and stuff.”
“It was an incredible sailing experience to the Scilly Isles. Dolphins, stars, a whale, also amazing views + some intensely funny moments.”
“I had fun & met lots of new people. I really enjoyed seeing dolphins & views. Feel very lucky to have visited the Isles of Scilly to see some amazing views.”
“It was a really fun trip. I saw lots of dolphins – and a whale in the distance! – with some pretty sunsets too.”
“I had an amazing time and loads of fun. I made lots of new friends.”
“Loved working in a team. Seeing lots of dolphins and a whale.”
“It was an enjoyable experience with many things learnt and done. I enjoyed helming the most.”
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Sara, Jack Thompson, Annant Shah, Dave Dent, Lizzie Miller and special congratulations to Katie Hamlet who completed her second mate assessment!
Next came a voyage with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. They stayed in Brixham for the first night as the weather was fairly awful, though it did look picturesque from the berth:
They sailed the next morning (Sunday) into quite strong winds and a lumpy sea, which made it an interesting sail to Dartmouth! They went onto Fisherman’s Pontoon then moved to Town Quay at 5pm.
On Monday there were strong winds so they had a day in harbour – though not a stationary day for the boat! They refuelled at Noss Dart Marina and then had lunch. Then they moved to Fisherman’s Pontoon and then again to Town Quay when it was free in the evening! This meant that Vaughan, who was new to Prolific’s sea staff, got a lot of boat handling practice, and the team was able to see the sights around the harbour:
Meanwhile the crew had time ashore, so it was a busy day for everyone.
The weather improved on Tuesday and they had a lovely sail in sunshine to Salcombe, with a man overboard recovery drill on the way. We don’t have photos of the young people but it looks as though the sea staff were having a good time!
Watchleader James did some great pilotage through Salcombe entrance, before dinner, a story and bed!
Wednesday morning was spent ashore in Salcombe for the crew with ice creams, and they left after lunch to sail for Brixham with all sorts of skills and drills along the way. The voyage ended on Thursday after 74 nautical miles and you can see their voyage track here. Ten people earned RYA Start Yachting certificates. Here’s OYT South’s sea staff and the EMCT staff at the end of the voyage:
Feedback included:
“Best bit: being at the helm and being able to sail and do stuff and help out. That was amazing. So many incredible experiences! The actual sailing was so interesting.”
“Brilliant trip, everyone was so lovely and I loved taking on a slightly more adult role on the ship. One of my best trips ever, made so by the people! Helming as we left Dartmouth, getting us away from the pontoon, that was really good.”
“Loved every moment of this trip.”
“Amazing trip! Everyone got close really quickly which made living together enjoyable. Best bit: making the cookies, while out at sea and also seeing the absolute mess we made with the flour. Flour does not go well when the boat is rocking. Learnt that the hard way. Worst bit: having to walk like Jack Sparrow, when the boat is rocking. You just look like you’re drunk, going side to side, you can’t stay upright.”
“Incredible experience, especially the dolphins. Up there with the best trips I have been on.”
And from the EMCT staff:
“Best bit: meeting all of you lovely people. It’s always such a pleasure to spend time with people who were all very different and to watch everyone blend together like a little family. It’s just so special and to do that sailing is just such a magical thing. Most lasting memory has to be the dolphins. That is the most amazing display of dolphins that I’ve ever seen. Watching them play on our bow wave was just incredible. Funniest bit is going to have to be the extreme washing up. I mean I was terrified, but afterwards I found it funny. Once my heart rate had calmed down and wasn’t having bit of crockery launched at my head any more. it was fantastic! All the crew made this such a special week.”
“Best bit: sailing this lovely vessel and putting all the sails up and seeing it work nicely and everyone getting involved. That was great. Most lasting memory: best dolphins on the bowsprit I’ve ever seen. That was phenomenal. Fantastic ship, amazing crew & fantastic experience.”
Big thanks to sea staff Lee Mosscrop, Sara, Josh, Vaughan Marsh, Anna Owen, Linnéa Johansson and James Robinson.
On Friday we had a maintenance day. Huge thanks to all involved: Lee Mosscrop, Sara, Josh, Mark, Adam Lane, Anna Owen, Linnéa Johansson, Harvey Snook, Ruth Snook, Pavan Kumar Kamaraju, James Robinson, Tyler Grant, Unity Bowns, Philippa Dunbar and Mike Dunbar. They got through some shopping and planning; Sara and Tyler worked on the mizzen, tensioning up the battens and securing the ends of the batten pockets. Anna, Philippa and Mike did bilge cleans, exercised the seacocks and more. Linnéa did a super-thorough lifejackets check. Unity replaced the piping for the forward port heads, also replacing the siphon brake and cleaning the 3-way valve. James, Harvey and Ruth cleaned out the pump engine space and steering flat – a huge job to empty and re-stow it, and checked all the steering gear. Josh and helpers removed most of the saloon floor to work on the fuel tanks, dealing with an issue where the forward diesel tank is sucking in air when filling the day tank. There were also some celebrations as it had been Tyler’s 18th birthday two days before, Unity’s 24th the day before, and Harvey’s 17th the day after!
Then in the evening we were delighted to have an evening sail with the High Sheriff of Devon, Caroline Harlow, and a group of her friends. It was absolutely perfect conditions for a sail – enough wind, golden sunset, and any number of dolphins.
The High Sheriff said afterwards: “Thank you, each and every one of you, for enabling such a perfect evening on Prolific to take place last Friday. Quite simply, it could not have been bettered. From the welcome we all received on board, to the safety briefings (thanks Lee), to the skippering, to the galley elves who made everything happen, to the drinks waiters, to the skilled handling of so many novices, to the sunset and then the dolphins, THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES OVER. Oh, and how could I forget the bowsprit experience with dolphins skimming underneath us.
All of us had the most wonderful experiences. To quote: ‘That is the best evening I have ever had’; ‘We couldn’t have enjoyed it more, it was one of the most amazing evenings I’ve ever had and one I will always remember’; ‘A fantastic evening, it really did alleviate a lot of my stress’; ‘All in all hard to surpass’; ‘pure joy’. That is only some of the comments I have received.
The work you do is remarkable.”
She has promised to spread the word in Devon!
Comments left on board included:
“What a fabulous crew – so welcoming – and a beautiful boat – and sunset, and sail and dolphins – Terrific. OYT forever!”
“What an amazing evening. great to get a sense of what this amazing charity does. Thank You.”
“A brilliant evening with lovely people, especially the crew – you are wonderful!”
“Thank you beyond words. What a fabulous evening & night. I will promote you far & wide. You are all amazing!”
Another guest wrote on social media:
“Sometimes I have times that I know I will never, ever forget.
Last night was one of those times.
Ocean Youth Trust South took us sailing and we saw dolphins and literally sobbed! I have waited 30 years since I last saw them.
I can’t advocate enough for the incredible work that this charity does with young people. It is inspiring.
I was invited to sail by Caroline Harlow, High Sheriff of Devon. What an incredible human she is, spreading kindness and creating connections across Devon in her role.”
You can see the vessel track here. Big thanks to a record number of sea staff: Lee Mosscrop, Sara, Josh, Mark, Adam Lane, Anna Owen, Linnéa Johansson, Harvey Snook, Pavan Kumar Kamaraju, James Robinson, Tyler Grant and Unity Bowns.
This week’s voyage has been with St Brelades Youth Project from Jersey. They joined in Brixham on Saturday and the voyage began with a farewell to Brixham Marina who have been looking after us so well all summer. Huge thanks and we’ll be back next year!
We had twelve young people and three group leaders on board: everyone was up for a challenge so they set off early evening on an overnight passage to Fowey, motor sailing in light winds.
There were so many dolphins around the boat that the skipper had to abandon plans for a man overboard recovery demonstration – the advice is not to disturb their environment by too many manoeuvres if you can help it, but to hold your course and leave the dolphins to do dolphin things.
There were clear skies and spectacular star-gazing. By 0300 there was enough wind to sail and they arrived in Fowey at 0700 and tied up alongside a dredger:
This was especially impressive as the crew had set off from Jersey at 0500 the previous morning! They had shore leave to explore beautiful Fowey, running ashore in the dinghy.
Next day they were up at 0530 (!) and off straight away towards Dartmouth. This time they did manage a fire drill and man overboard recovery demonstration before the dolphins came to join them again.
They arrived in Dartmouth in the afternoon to enjoy Dartmouth regatta week, watching lots of fun dinghy racing.
Tuesday saw another 0530 start to get the right tide and get ahead of strong winds being pushed from south west by Hurricane Erin. Tricky decisions made, with so many early starts, but right for everyone aboard to keep safe and keep moving. Sadly this early start did not involve a gorgeous sunrise:
They had a fantastic sail all morning to Weymouth, arriving mid-afternoon. Boat speed reached 11.1 knots on a broad reach! They had shore leave and showers, and a movie night on board:
Wednesday was very gusty – everyone was keeping an eye on conditions with a plan to leave for Poole early evening in an expected lull. The young people worked on their RYA qualifications in the morning and then had an afternoon of beach games before heading back on board to plan the pilotage.
They slipped at 1700 with three reefs in the main and the staysail up:
They sailed to Poole fairway where the young people took command of Prolific to pilot us into Poole harbour. Arrived after midnight to park alongside the wall – something we haven’t done for many years. Big appreciation to Poole Yacht Haven for their flexibility in getting us in and keeping everyone safe.
Yesterday all were happy to stay in port as it was far too windy to sail, so they had a well-deserved lie-in, followed by clean-up and shore leave. Meantime, staff moved the boat into the marina and onto the pontoon – a manoeuvre which led the marina to share a video captioned “Mark, you made that look easy in 25-knot cross winds! 10/10”.
The young people then got a very special treat: a trip to the RNLI global training HQ in Poole to tour their facilities and use their training simulator.
The evening finished with a spectacular fireworks display – you can see a video here.
The voyage ended this morning after 211 miles – in less than 5 days at sea! You can see their complete voyage track here.
We’ll put their feedback in the next issue.
Big thanks to sea staff Mark Todd, Adam Lane, Josh, Anna Owen, Clara Theil, Pavan Kumar and Harvey Snook.
* Volunteer sea staff vacancies – can you help?
This is all that’s currently available this season – please let us know if you can help.
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.
24-28 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
This is a rare voyage where we don’t need volunteers the night before – the crew join on Friday evening to make the most of half-term, and sea staff can only join on Friday afternoon after the previous crew leaves that same morning.
Contact caroline.white@oytsouth.org if you would be interested in sailing.
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!
2025 individual voyage available – LAST FEW places for young people this year!
Our 2025 programme still has a few exciting opportunities to join us this year on the ONE remaining voyage with spaces – please spread the word!
29 Oct – 2 Nov, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £545 per person – half term -– up to 8 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 adult weekends are open for bookings:
24-26 April 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
9-11 Oct 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
These weekends are ideal for people who want to find out more about the possibility of volunteering with us – but you are also welcome if you simply want to come along and enjoy a sail on board Prolific!
Fundraising event in Goodwood House on 6th November with Libby Purves – NOW ON SALE!
Come and join us on 6th November at 7pm for this amazing event – BOOK NOW and please spread the word. We want to sell lots of tickets!
Goodwood is the seat of the Dukes of Richmond whose family art collection is one of the greatest in any English country house. You will be able to enjoy drinks and canapes, and visit the State Apartments as well as enjoying a talk by renowned journalist, broadcaster and author Libby Purves. If you saw Libby’s recent article in the Times about us, you will know that she is passionate about sail training. But there is a special reason why Libby is speaking at this event.
The entire evening has been set up by our great friends at Ned’s Fund, who have made many generous contributions towards the cost of voyages for young people who couldn’t otherwise afford to sail. They support a number of different charities but this year’s Goodwood event is all for OYT South. Ned’s Fund was set up in memory of a brilliant young man who took his own life in 2017. Libby also lost her son, Nicholas, to suicide in 2006, when he was 23. Nick was a lovely and talented person and a great sailor who had done a voyage with OYT South in our previous boat, John Laing.
So the combination of Ned’s Fund, Libby Purves and OYT South will make for a very special and unmissable evening. Tickets now available for £45 per person!
Thanks to those who have volunteered to help at this event; but if anyone else would like to come but can’t afford it (including young or unwaged volunteers), do get in touch as it may still be possible to get you in as an additional helper on the night, handing out drinks and leaflets. Email caroline.white@oytsouth.org.
Kit Power Thanksgiving Service 16th October
Recently we were sad to announce the death at the age of 91 of Kit Power, the last of the group who established the Ocean Youth Club in the 1960s and still a great supporter of OYT South right up to the last few months.
A Thanksgiving Service for Kit will be held at St John’s Church, West Meon, Hampshire, at 2:30pm on Thursday 16th October 2025. All welcome and it would be lovely to see lots of OYC / OYT people there. You can find more details here and a link to click to tell the family you are coming.
You will also see that the family is very kindly raising funds in memory of Kit to create The Kit Power OYT South Bursary so that we can offer more places on board Prolific for young people who could not otherwise afford to sail.
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.
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. There will also be a course on sail repairs, splicing etc., and a session with a behaviour expert recommended by one of our school clients, with a great track record of showing how to get the best out of young people. And there should be an opportunity to do the GMDSS exam for your radio licence.
Very soon we will be able to publish a detailed programme (some of these courses will run at the same time so you will have to choose) and start taking bookings!
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 – just one date left this season!
We have one more planned maintenance day this season: Monday 13th October– Southampton.
Please put the date 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.
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Open for 2025 entries.
If you have enjoyed a voyage with OYT South and want to come again (and are aged 11-25), please think about entering for this award. You can win up to £500 off the price of another voyage, by sending in an account of a voyage you have already done with us. It can be a logbook, diary, story, pictures, video – anything which gives the judges an idea of why you had a good time and would like to come again. The prize is judged at the end of each season and the award can be spent on a voyage the following year. Entries should be emailed to webmaster1@oytsouth.org or posted to the office. See here for more details of this award, which was set up in memory of one of the charity’s founders. You can also see some previous winning entries.
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to the Gosport Marine Festival, Paul and Angela Brassley, Carl Howitz, Rob Hill and the estate of Valerie Tehel for kind donations or pledges, as well as to everyone who has been contributing so generously to the Kit Power Bursaries Fund.
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 almost £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 almost £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.