In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Penny Scott-Bayfield memorial service 4th November
- * Voyage news
- * Volunteer sea staff vacancies
- 2027 sailing programme
- Sea Staff awards – nominations needed
- Adult voyages
- Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
- Dates for your diary
- AGM and curry booking! And is your membership up to date?
- Vessel tracking
- * Financial appeal
- Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
- Police Dog Hogan
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £3,200 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Penny Scott-Bayfield memorial 4th November
Following the very sad news in June of the death of our much-loved Chair, Penny Scott-Bayfield, her family and friends have asked us to circulate the details of her memorial service on 4th November in Chelsea:
It would be wonderful to see as many as possible of Penny’s OYT South friends there. Do please RSVP to psbmemorial@gmail.com as requested but it would be helpful if you could also let us know so we have an idea of OYT South attendees.
* Voyage news
The last newsletter ended as the final mixed individuals’ group of the summer completed their voyage.
Feedback included:
“A great crew and staff team that made even the worst parts (seasick) fun and a wonderful journey. Plus I loved helming.”
“Freeing, peaceful and met so many great people!”
“Best bit: getting to have such a unique experience and getting to see the Channel Islands for the first time with a really cool group of strangers who I feel like I’ve learnt so much from on a personal level.”
“I had a great sailing trip and made some really cool friends, with experiences I will cherish forever … Best bit: all of the learning experiences – helming, doing the ropes and everyone pitching in, so if one person couldn’t do it other people would step in.”
“Had a great time bonding with people, working together & playing fun / silly games … Best bit: this group is amazing and I like every one of you. Life can get so serious at times, so it has been so nice to have a laugh and a giggle with all you guys.”
“Grateful for the experience and new insights gained … Best bit: coming back near the Isle of Wight with the big waves to our stern where we were rocking all over the place, but it was really good vibes on deck.”
“Fantastic sailing experience with amazing sea staff … Best bit: getting stuck in with the sailing and doing whatever needed doing … Most lasting memory: sailing out of sight of land for the first time.”
“Lovely people, great new experiences and very funny and interesting games.”
“Amazing trip and made so many new besties.”
“Best bit: sailing back from Alderney yesterday. I loved the atmosphere, you know with the fog and the waves and the rain. It was just, it was elite.”
“Best bit: talking with everyone, hanging out, and doing the night sail back to Southampton, seeing the fog disappear and it being pitch black.”
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Sara, Keri Hammond, Si Brammer, Iori Kent, Aaron Thomas-Epstein and Megan Flood.
Saturday was a day sail for sponsors, donors and friends of the charity – including the High Sheriff of Hampshire; Trinity House; Spinlock; Hampshire County Council, ASTO and more!
We were thrilled to have William Maltby, the High Sheriff, on board for his birthday. Of course there was cake!
And we had just renewed the Trinity House and Honourable Company of Master Mariners boards on the sides of the doghouse and had been wondering what to do with the old ones … the answer seemed to be to write voyage certificates on the back and give them to Vikki and Scott who were involved in making those grants!
Comments included:
“What a day! You should all be so proud of what you do and the lives you shape.”
“What an amazing voyage, such an amazing staff and organisation, I look forward to helping further.”
“What a wonderful day – enabling me to understand more about OYT South and the joy / skills that young people experience and gain.”
“What a privilege to see how OYT transforms lives. Thank you SO much.”
“OYT are an inspirational and incredibly impressive charity. Thank you for sharing it with us.”
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Mark, Sara, Miranda Camping, Patrick Kelly, Keri Hammond, Aaron Thomas-Epstein, Andrew Page, Tyler Grant and Caz.
The crew joining on Sunday was from the Amber Foundation, which works with young adults who have been homeless or at risk of homelessness. They started with a few nerves and a lot of energy but were all engaged and involved in safety briefings:
They did a clipping-on race and deck preps before crossing to Cowes with the young people on the helm and doing winch drills.
They had dinner on arrival and there were mixed feelings about extreme washing up! Some people were also unconvinced about the idea of bedtime stories, given that they were adults, but The Lorax went down well and after that they had Dr Seuss every night from different sea staff members, with requests from the crew!
On Monday there were showers and shore time in Cowes after happy hour cleaning, then tacking up the Solent with fully reefed main and mizzen. Often a tricky thing to do first time, but the crew all got stuck into helming, looking out and tacking the staysail.
They had a break for baked potatoes and also a man overboard recovery drill with all the sea staff stepping up! Tyler went over the side in the rescue gear; Nick (visiting from OYT North and on board Prolific for the first time) dropping the headsail, Keri acting as first mate, Patrick at the helm and Constantinos merely “supervising” from inside. The crew then had a briefing about the man overboard recovery gear and cold-water shock.
There was a difficult park in Yarmouth, shore time and back on board for a stir-fry. Rather than extreme washing they did the Zen edition with whalesong in silence and everyone loved it. Keri and Aaron read Hop on Pop and Scrambled Egg Super and they don’t think anyone was awake after the first one!
Tuesday was a horribly rainy morning in Yarmouth so they pushed sailing back and did some RYA training inside – parts of boat, knots, points of sail.
Slipped after lunch (pizza rolls!) for a breezy downwind sail in watches, under staysail alone.
They were overtaken by a racing trimaran doing 35 knots!
They gybed out through the forts while eating creamy veg pasta, and anchored in Sandown under a beautiful sunset.
Everyone was tired but they relaxed with stargazing on deck and saw the Milky Way. Nick read The Gruffalo – an OYT North favourite.
Wednesday was a big day! They cleaned the boat and a few people had a swim, with hot chocolate as a reward.
Then they set off round the Isle of Wight: a beautiful beat in moderate seas. There was a bit of seasickness but high spirits with the accompanying dolphins, sunshine and stunning views.
There was enough wind for a spectacular passage through the Needles Channel but then they had to drop sails and motor the rest of the way when the wind completely died.
Burritos for dinner and then everyone was on deck for buoy-spotting in the dark up Southampton Water. Mooring and putting the boat to bed was all very slick from a keen and now highly competent crew. Patrick read Horton Hears a Who and Dr Seuss’ Sleep book.
On Thursday there was a leisurely breakfast and plenty of bacon, then a very thorough end-of-voyage clean up and a final Dr Seuss: Oh The Places You’ll Go.
TLDR: phenomenal week even for an Amber trip (which are normally a favourite with sea staff anyway) – genuinely lovely young people who were so keen to learn and help run the boat, with an awesome group leader too. Cracking sailing, great food, and lots of stories. Happy days. Skipper Gotch says the loveliest thing was how the Amber residents were so consistently kind to each other.
Feedback included:
“I enjoyed the experience greatly, it let me take a breath from everyday life and allowed me to learn a bundle of new skills! I loved it.”
“Such an amazing experience. I’m so lucky … There’s not a part I didn’t enjoy. I enjoyed, like, learning the maps, putting up the sails, putting them down. I think it’s just all fun, just being part of it … The most memorable bit is just being able to say I’ve done something like this.”
“Experience of a lifetime … I couldn’t have picked like a better group to come. I think everyone was great. But definitely like laying out with a few of the boys looking up at the stars and having a laugh, like it’s probably one of my best things I’ve done in my whole life. You know, like, it was an experience of a lifetime. Seeing dolphins, like you know, it was great … I loved every bit of it.”
“Definitely one of the best experiences. Had a fantastic time and definitely got over my fear of water. Learnt a lot of new things and even steered the boat. Food was really good, helped cook which was fun. Thanks so much. Definitely don’t regret coming, when I almost didn’t come.”
“I really enjoyed my time on the boat and I’m very grateful to have the experience and learn new things. I love the boat staff and meeting new people.”
“I had a great time and will definitely be back in the future! … I don’t really have a best bit, I enjoyed all the trip but when we put the sails up when we were coming round yesterday and we were proper like heeling, I really enjoyed that.”
“I had a fantastic time on the boat. It’s been amazing seeing the views and exploring the Isle of Wight!
“Best moment, probably manning the helm as well. That was pretty fun and also shortly after that I think I was wearing the captain’s hat and was using binoculars to look out so felt really cool doing that … Most memorable, probably talking to all the sea staff with all the stories you have and sailing adventures, that was pretty cool.”
“Proper wicked time! Really enjoyed myself. Very happy with how everything turned out. Thank you for a great time Prolific, you will be missed … My best bit probably, just having a laugh, you know, making people smile, making people laugh, having a good joke and all that kind of stuff. Helping out around … I really liked when we were doing the radio call yesterday, that was wicked, you know. Made me feel like I was doing something important and something productive for the team and for the boat … It all kind of has been one big memorable moment and I’ll definitely remember this for a very long time.”
“This has been a great and wonderful experience from day one. I am very appreciative for the experience. Thank you.”
“I had an amazing time on this trip, been to places I’ve never been and learned so much. It was totally awesome … Best part of the voyage: now I was leading towards saying that night star gazing out when we were in Sandown Bay but actually something that comes a little bit before that was manning the helm coming into Sandown Bay. Like the sun was setting, it was just really lovely and peaceful, like you had the water all to yourself. And just keeping course and enjoying, like, how peaceful that was. That was really, really awesome.”
“Had a great time learning how to do literally everything you can do on a boat. Awesome bonding with other Ambers and staff. Would happily live on a sail boat and do this a thousand times over.
And from the Amber staff member who sailed with them: “The most memorable bit for me was on that first day when we were sailing and I came up and every single one of you were out and you were working hard and all the sails were up and every single one of you was smiling and it was just great for me to see all of you to have this opportunity, enjoying it and making the most of it.”
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Sara, Patrick Kelly, Keri Hammond, Tyler Grant, Matt Roe, Nick Duffett and special congratulations to Aaron Thomas-Epstein who completed his third mate assessment!
* Volunteer sea staff vacancies
Just at the moment we don’t have any sea staff vacancies which MUST be filled (thank you to all those of you who are committed to your voyages!). But as many of you will know, we normally sail with 7 sea staff but there is sometimes space for an 8th at the skipper’s discretion. If there is anyone who would like another voyage before the end of the season, do let us know at webmaster1@oytsouth.org and we can have a look at whether it’s possible to fit you in somewhere.
2027 sailing programme
Our 2027 sailing programme is now on the website and we are OPEN for group bookings (full-boat bookings for 12-15 young people). Please contact caroline.white@oytsouth.org to discuss voyage options for a school, charity, local authority or youth group.
There are currently a couple of voyages showing on the programme as designated for individual bookings in school summer holidays and these are now open for bookings (one is our annual shorter UK-only voyage for 11-16-year olds, the other is open to people up to the age of 25) but the intention is to add at least another four individual voyages soon – please contact us if you would like to be informed when the full set of individual voyages is confirmed.
There are also two 2027 adult weekends – ideal for new prospective volunteers to come and find out more!
Sea Staff awards – nominations needed
Regular readers will know that in recent years we have had our annual Gipsy Moth Award for Young Volunteer of the Year (aged 25 and under) – the current holder is Jack Thompson. But we have never had an award specifically for over-25 volunteers. This season, we are introducing the Brian Eyres Award, in memory of our late Skipper and Treasurer. Brian exemplified the best of volunteering, ashore and afloat, for OYT South as well as a range of other causes – he did so much in his lifetime and this award will be a way to recognise and remember his huge contribution to the OYC and to OYT South.
The Brian Eyres Award is not for long service or similar (we now have a series of long-service certificates for every five years that a volunteer spends with us). Instead, we want people to nominate volunteers if you see them doing something particularly impressive or heart-warming, ashore or afloat, in 2026. This could be something as simple as being the watchleader who took time to turn things round for a scared and unhappy young person on board; or the person who did a tough job in miserable conditions when no-one else wanted to do it; or someone who invented a brilliant activity to raise morale. It might be something which saved a voyage, but equally it could be something that no-one even noticed except you. Please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org with your nominations. Don’t worry about the age of the volunteer you are nominating – if we get anything for someone aged 25 and under, we can take it into account in the discussions about the Gipsy Moth Award (which is a collective decision by all the paid staff).
Nominations can come from anyone – other volunteers, staff, young people, parents and carers, clients, group leaders.
At the end of the year we will ask someone to look at nominations for the Brian Eyres Award and choose a winner to be announced at the next training weekend.
Adult voyages
There’s one more adult weekend this season, and two next year:
9-11 Oct 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening) – provisionally fully booked but please ask if you would like to go on the waiting list in case anyone drops out.
23-25 April 2027, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £275 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
17-19 Sept 2027, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £275 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! Contact us to ask about booking.
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.
Dates for your diary
Prolific has planned maintenance days this year and we always need lots of help (skilled or unskilled) – email refit@oytsouth.org to book yourself in – just one left this year:
Monday 12th October – Southampton
The 2026 OYT South AGM and Curry Night will be on Saturday 7th November.
Looking even further ahead, the next shorebased volunteers’ training weekend is set for 5th-7th February 2027 – keep it free!
AGM and curry booking! And is your membership up to date?
Our AGM and social evening will be on 7th November – you can see the details and book your curry here.
Don’t forget that although anyone can attend the AGM, you can only vote if you are a member of the charity. If you are unsure about whether you are a member at the moment, please ask. You can pay your membership fee here – either as a non-sailing membership, or as part of your annual mates’ fee for sailing volunteers. There are reduced rates for under-25s, and sailing volunteers of any age who can’t afford to pay their annual fee can talk to us about bursary support – no-one should be deterred from sailing as a watchleader or bosun by the cost. But anyone who is regularly involved with the charity ought to be a member, able to have a say at the AGM, elect the Trustees and influence the future direction of the charity.
Vessel tracking
Prolific’s vessel tracking is available on our website – you can look at any time to see where we are and where we have been sailing. Big thanks to Millennium who built us a whole new tracking system when the one we used to use was discontinued!
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Royal Thames Yacht Club for another very kind donation towards bursaries.
Thanks also to a donor who prefers to remain anonymous, for a very generous contribution towards bursaries for young people who could not otherwise afford to sail.
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.
Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
Several years ago our friend, renowned marine artist Colin Baxter, painted this picture of Prolific and people were offered the chance to buy prints. It has been suggested that we should offer another chance for people to buy one!
The unframed prints measure 370mm x 230mm plus border. They will be numbered and signed, and will cost £70 if you can pick yours up in Southampton, and £75 if you need it posted to somewhere in the UK (they will probably come rolled in a cardboard tube). See here to order. Anyone outside the UK wanting to order a copy, please email us.
Police Dog Hogan
Regular readers will know that our Trustee Eddie Bishop plays the fiddle in the band Police Dog Hogan. They are playing in Exeter on Saturday 5th December, and then three nights in London, at the Half Moon, Putney, on 14th, 15th and 16th December. There will be OYT South people at several of these shows – come and join us – tickets here. You can find the band on YouTube if you haven’t heard their music before:
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £3,200 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 over £3,200 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, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok, and these days we recommend Bluesky rather than Twitter/X – 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.
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Open for 2026 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.
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.