In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Voyage news
- * Volunteer sea staff – spaces that MUST be filled – can you help?
- 2025 individual voyages available – individual bookings for young people
- 2025 group voyages available – group bookings for young people or adults
- 2025 adult voyages available
- Events needing volunteers – in Hampshire and in Devon
- Prolific maintenance days – dates for your diary – including NEXT MONDAY – help needed!
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- Keeping our website up to date – can you help?
- FREE boat show and a chance to visit Prolific – please spread the word
- 360° Prolific tour
- Advice on careers in the marine sector for young people
- Financial appeal
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,400 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
- Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing
- 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 our Muntham House School crew in Poole, where they planned the pilotage out of the harbour as well as doing some dinghy paddling practice.
They had a great sail back to the Solent and picked up a buoy outside Yarmouth.
The staff had to set watches through the night and four of the boys volunteered to take their turns and did a great job.
Early on Saturday one of our supporters came past and kindly sent in this photo:
We were just announcing that renowned ocean sailor Pip Hare is joining OYT South as a Vice Patron and we had been showing the young people some of the videos she made during the Vendée Globe race and as she made her way to Australia after being dismasted. The boys all joined in with a video to welcome her.
They tried to sail off the buoy but the wind died right off just as they were all ready. They still got the sails up and tried to sail towards Cowes but the tide was trying to take them backwards towards the Needles.
They did some tacking practice but eventually had to start the engine as they were really making no progress. Thew weather was more suited to the next task on board: eating watermelons! After lunch they had a fire drill, and then got in some reefing practice, before dropping sails and heading in to Cowes.
The young people had some time ashore before coming back and doing some more pilotage planning – this time to taker us back to Ocean Village in the dark. After dinner the young people were energised and excited by a round of Extreme Washing Up, and eventually they set off and the young people did some great pilotage up Southampton water. They had hot chocolates, saw fireworks and passed by huge container ships on the way back. It was a long day for the young people but they coped admirably.
They left the boat next morning having completed 151 miles at sea and you can see their full voyage track here. All the boys and two school staff earned RYA Start Yachting certificates.
Feedback included:
“The best bit was being able to learn the new things to me, like putting up the sails. The most memorable bit was the night sailing.”
“It was fun and had a good time.”
“Feeling confident: not even worrying about big waves.”
“The washing up thing was properly funny because we had cups thrown at us and all.”
One of the accompanying school staff said: “A terrific experience for all people involved. Sea staff were outstanding in providing a 360 experience. We will be booking again to continue a wonderful partnership … The best bit for me … my role at school is to be there when it all goes wrong, so it’s been nice being there when it all goes right and to see the young people just thrive and growing in confidence and just experiencing new people and new relationships. And really pushing themselves out of their comfort zone.”
The other leader said: “An amazing sail with a friendly crew, who made me feel welcomed and safe. Would come back!!! … The most memorable thing was strengthening my work relationship with the boys. Being at school sometimes you’re not able to spend as much time you know with the lads. Also meeting the crew – amazing people – very welcoming – very professional and made me feel safe. that’s the most memorable. Nurturing.”
A parent wrote to us just after the boys got home: “To all involved in the Prolific voyage for Muntham House this week. We just wanted to say a big Thank you for enabling [our son] to have such a wonderful experience, he has come home full of tales of his adventures and shared lots of the new skills he has learnt, it feels like he has grown more mature and confident in the five days he has been away. He will take this forward into his adult life and have many happy memories to cherish. You have made a huge difference to our young man.”
Big thanks to sea staff Mark Todd, Andrew Wilkes, Josh, Matt Lovett and Erin Misselbrook and special congratulations to Keri Hammond who passed her second mate assessment and extra huge congratulations to Sara Abdur, our staff mate, who passed her first mate assessment. As we always say when someone passes this challenging assessment, this is a great achievement as the first mate is the person who would have to take over if the skipper was ill or injured, so the criteria are demanding and we’re proud of all our qualified first mates. Sara has come a long way since joining us as a teenager on a school voyage in 2019!
This week’s voyage has been with students from Dartmouth Academy. They had the usual briefings and familiarisation:
And then they began with an evening sail to Cowes:
Next day they all got together to look at the passage to Weymouth:
It was a glorious sail in the sunshine:
They spent Wednesday in Weymouth, with shore leave and time on the beach as well as working hard towards their RYA certificates, and dinghy rides in the harbour:
Yesterday they had a very early start and were under way by 6am. They chose a route fairly close to the Jurassic Coast so there was plenty to see, and oppor tunities to go out on the bowsprit in glorious weather:
They were coming through the Needles Channel by the middle of the day.
From there they headed back to Ocean Village – it had been a long day at sea!
You can see their complete voyage track here. We’ll put their feedback in the next newsletter.
Big thanks to sea staff Gotch, Cathy Lacey, Steve Lacey, Andy Kitching, Linnea Johansson, Roisin Smith and Aaron Arnold.
* Volunteer sea staff – spaces that MUST be filled – can you help?
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 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.
23-27 May, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun. This one doesn’t need sea staff joining the day before.
2-6 June, Southampton – watchleader needed, ideally able to stay for the maintenance day on 7th June
23-28 June, Southampton – qualified watchleader. Ideally able to stay for the maintenance day on 29th June.
16-21 Aug, Brixham – qualified watchleader – must be available to stay for the maintenance day on 22nd Aug and to help with an evening event that day
27-30 Sept, Southampton – watchleader or bosun
1-5 Oct, Southampton – watchleader or bosun
14-19 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun, ideally able to join for maintenance day on 13th October.
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!
Young people aged 16-25 who have sailed with us and earned a recommendation to train as volunteers but who need more experience before taking on the full responsibilities of watchleader or bosun can also apply for funding to join an individual voyage as a crew member, to gain extra time on board and develop their skills.
2025 individual voyages available – individual bookings for young people
Our 2025 programme has plenty of 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:
28 May – 1 June, Southampton, 4 nights, £525 per person – 1 place left – half term
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!
18-23 July, Poole to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £630 per person
24-29 July, Brixham to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £630 per person
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.
30 Aug – 3 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £525 per person
4-9 Sept, Southampton to Southampton, 5 nights, age 15-25, £630 per person
29 Oct – 2 Nov, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £545 per person – half term
Email voyageadmin@oytsouth.org to ask about individual bookings.
2025 group voyages available – group bookings for young people or adults
Do you know a school or youth club or another organisation which might like an exclusive booking for 12-15 people?
We can also consider the occasional adult voyage if anyone has an idea for an adult group.
Dates currently available:
15-19 Sept, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25 (plus adult leaders if required), 15 places available, £525 per person
22-26 Sept, Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25 (plus adult leaders if required), 15 places available, £525 per person
Email caroline.white@oytsouth.org to ask about group bookings and funding help if needed.
2025 adult voyages available
We have one remaining voyage for adult individual bookings:
10-12 Oct, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £265 per person, weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
Either of the remaining group voyages listed above could be made available for an adult group of 12-15 people (15-19 Sept or 22-26 Sept).
Events needing volunteers – in Hampshire and in Devon
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!
We are also hosting an event on board at the end of the maintenance day on Friday 22nd August in Brixham, Devon – let us know if you can help with that.
Any of these events could be suitable for under-18s who have sailed with us: it is always good to have a few enthusiastic young people to talk about what they did on board, and encourage others to try it!
Prolific maintenance days – dates for your diary – 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.
Sunday 18th May – Gosport
Saturday 7th June – Southampton
Sunday 29th June – Southampton
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.
Keeping our website up to date – can you help?
OYT South’s website is quite big and has a lot of pages – it’s possible that someone may be looking at a page which none of our staff has re-read for quite a while, or clicking a link we haven’t tried recently. So if you spot any broken links, errors or anything out of date, PLEASE tell us. We can only put things right if we know about them. This is a great way for someone to help us, especially if you can’t easily volunteer on voyages or help with events or maintenance. The odd hour or so in the comfort of your own home, looking through the website (and trying to imagine how it would work for someone new to us) is always very much appreciated! This is an ongoing task, not something that needs to be done on or by a specific date.
FREE boat show and a chance to visit Prolific – please spread the word
Are you coming on a voyage, or organising a group of young people to sail, and wanting a chance to look round the boat beforehand? Have you been on a voyage and want to show the boat to your family and friends? Are you thinking of sailing with us but not sure what it might be like? Or interested in finding out more about sailing as an adult volunteer?
MDL’s South Coast & Green Tech Boat Show 2025 could be the answer. It’s FREE show with lots to see – and Prolific will be at the heart of the show and open to the public on Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th May. Do have a look at the website – and come and say hello to us!
360° Prolific tour
Our website now includes a fabulous 360° tour all round Prolific – you can explore the boat above and below deck from all angles. Do have a look! There’s also a link on all the pages of the “Sail with us” section of this website. Big thanks to James Packer from Bridge Command for creating it.
Advice on careers in the marine sector for young people
We have created a page on the website for links to a huge variety of careers in the marine sector – at the end of every voyage, there will be a link to this on the back of the voyage certificates given to the young people, to give them ideas about opportunities both afloat and ashore, with options for people with different interests, skills and levels of education, and hopefully including ideas that many will never have considered, alongside the more obvious maritime roles. The page is a work in progress and we are keen to add more links, so if you have any suggestions, please send them in.
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 £2,400 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 £2,400 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
Vessel tracking – see where Prolific is sailing
Vessel tracking has been switched on again for the season – 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.
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.