In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Brian Eyres
- * Refit news and thanks
- * Group booking available in June
- * Chris Ellis Award – the winners
- * Shorebased training weekend report (and additional first aid course availability)
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings – new April vacancy
- * Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026
- Adult voyages
- 2026 dates for your diary
- * 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!
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Brian Eyres
Yesterday a big group from the Ocean Youth Club and Ocean Youth Trust joined other friends and family to say farewell to our longtime skipper, Trustee and Treasurer Brian Eyres, who died in January. Brian’s sisters Jan and Rachel led a very warm and moving tribute to a man who had packed so much into his life that all those of us who knew him in only one or two contexts were left marvelling at the breadth of his activities. From Young Farmers to amateur dramatics, country dance calling, musicals, a big extended family, any number of friends, and an ability to fix almost anything he turned his hand to, Brian seems to have filled every minute of his 80 years, and the turnout for his funeral only showed how many lives he had touched. The Ocean Youth Club and Ocean Youth Trust were of course particularly special to him and the family very kindly asked our CEO Mark Todd to present a tribute on behalf of the sail training community. Brian was a key figure for us for more than thirty five years and played a huge part in building up the successful charity we see today. Thousands of young people have had their lives changed through adventure under sail and Brian helped to make that possible, as well as having a profound impact on so many staff and volunteers.
Another OYC skipper, Chris Dobson, provided the words with which Brian’s sister concluded the service:
Rest well Brian, your watch is over.
The service was streamed and will be available on demand here https://watch.obitus.com/, with Username riso0254 and Password 410408.
* Refit news and thanks
Big thanks over the last couple of weeks to Gotch, Josh, Sara, Jack, Joe, Helena, Alex, Tom, Chris Pryke, Iori Kent, Unity Bowns, Andrew Wilkes, Keri Hammond, Michelle van den Bergh, Katherine Chippett, Si Brammer and Juno Hollyhock.
The team had a couple of days off after the training weekend but came roaring back on Wednesday last week. Since then they have been painting on deck when weather allows, and anti-mould painting inside when it doesn’t. They also repainted the marks on the anchor chain.
Prolific needed to be moved to a different berth at the end of the week – an epic voyage of 0.1 nautical miles in a strong Force 2; but there was lots to do in preparation, including some key tasks like putting the steering wheel back on!
They also did a lot of tidying; put the anchor chain fully back in the locker; removed some of the extra extra winter shore lines; and people were kept busy dropping the dinghy, putting the outboard back on and checking all the systems.
The move went smoothly:
After the move there was a big tidy and moving all the gear back. The old dinghy came to the new berth under oars: refit volunteers Helena and Joe are aiming to earn Competent Crew certificates on voyages with us in the coming season so it did no harm to get ahead with the section requiring them to handle a dinghy under oars!
This week began with something really unusual: sunshine! The team had a couple of really good painting days, including the chartroom sides and roof, helm binnacle and pedestal, bowsprit, skylight, workshop roof and pump housing. They also re-installed the steps on the starboard side; repaired the backing for the window frames of the chartroom; did more painting on the anchor chain; and installed new constrictors.
Meanwhile Simon from Bentley Marine came along to do the engine service, which was finished on Tuesday!
The weather was so bad on Wednesday that people could only work down below and Helena and Jack stayed in the refit house doing jobs there, including putting the inner covers back on all the bunk cushions.
Work continued down below yesterday:
But the weather was a bit better (though still very cold) and there was a chance to tackle some jobs on deck. The last of the constrictors were fitted:
Some of the skills learned at the recent training weekend were also put to good use as lots of rope whipping was done as part of a general check of all the ropes. Meanwhile Chris Pryke was working on the pump engine and also finding some deck leaks.
And huge thanks to all involved in keeping the refit team extremely well-fed:
PLEASE come and help if you possibly can – even if you just turn up for a day or so here and there to help with some cleaning or fetching and carrying; or perhaps by buying some of the small refit items and materials we need; or dropping off some morale-boosting goodies to the workers. Just email refit@oytsouth.org to see how you can help. If you can offer more time or genuine expertise, that’s fantastic; but don’t ever think you won’t be valued and appreciated for a smaller offering – even a gesture or a supportive message can be just what the team needs if it’s cold and wet and the job they are tackling is proving difficult!
Dates for your diary! We’ll be looking for help on refit weekdays but for those of you who can only come at weekends, this is the remaining weekend when we’re currently planning for the team to be working and needing loads of support:
7th and 8th March – post-refit clean, and sails and kit back on board
Email refit@oytsouth.org if you can help. Refit volunteers should generally be aged 18+ but if you are 16 or 17 and have already received a recommendation to come back and train as a volunteer, it’s always worth asking as we may be able to include you.
No experience needed – plenty of unskilled jobs and plenty of skilled jobs which we can teach you!
* Group booking available in June
Following an unexpected cancellation, we do now have a group booking still available (having thought that all the group voyages were booked and we only had spaces left on individual voyages this year).
We are looking for a client to take the following voyage:
2-7 June, Southampton to Southampton, 5 nights, £645 per person for a group booking of 12-15 places.
This is a wonderful time of year and it should be a great voyage so please do share this with schools, youth groups or anyone else who might be interested. We could even consider an adult voyage. There’s a chance of bursary funding to open it up to disadvantaged young people. Contact us for more information.
* Chris Ellis Award – the winners
The Chris Ellis Award, in memory of one of the charity’s founders, is given for a piece of work created by a young person based on their voyage. Winners get funding help to sail again, and the competition is judged by Chris’s daughter Emma and by Peter Tracey who knew Chris and sailed with him on a voyage which started it all!
This year’s Chris Ellis Award Winners for the 2025 season are Lucy and Oli Heaton who created this Powerpoint about sailing with us, and gave a presentation at a sailing club all about it (click image to see the full PowerPoint):
The runner-up prize is shared between Eleanor Fowles for this poem about a voyage last April (click on image to see full size):
And Athena Lawson for this picture entitled “Tethys”.
You can read about previous Chris Ellis Award winners on the website, and if you are doing a voyage this season and you enjoy it and want to come again, do think about submitting an entry for the next award!
* Shorebased training weekend report (and additional first aid course availability)
Huge thanks to everyone involved in making our training weekend such a great success. We had 51 staff and volunteers attending over the weekend!
We were at a new venue, Foxlease Park – a lovely country setting with meals, accommodation and classrooms all on site, run by very friendly volunteers.
We started with two Youth Aware Mental Health courses, run by Solent Mind, as we had more than 40 interested staff and volunteers – too many for one instructor!
After lunch we had Robin Launder from Behaviour Buddy, who would more commonly be addressing an audience of teaching staff wanting to develop their classroom management skills, but who offered lots of tips on how to aim for 100% engagement, 100% of the time. Robin himself evidently achieves this by being a riveting performer – hard to lose focus when you can’t wait to see what he does next! – but many of his ideas will be applicable when trying to motivate a watch of four or five young people. He’s a brilliant speaker, full of ideas, and we will be recommending him to all our school clients as well as aiming to build some of his techniques into our work on board.
That was followed by updates from the Safeguarding Team and the office team, while some people did their SRC qualifications (for their radio licence) with Graeme Findlay.
Then on Saturday evening we had a presentation from our CEO Mark Todd, with the usual review of the season. This year, however, prompted by the loss of three towering figures from our history, Kit Power, Michael Campbell and Brian Eyres, Mark also included some reflections on the charity’s history and in particular the people who made such a difference when the Ocean Youth Club folded and OYT South was born. Many volunteers and staff joined the thriving charity you can see today, so it is worth remembering the first decade or so when we were wrestling with having, all too often, no volunteers, no clients and no money. It’s so important to appreciate all the people who have contributed and are contributing to all our current successes.
With this in mind, Mark announced two new awards. The first is a set of long-service certificates, with versions for 5 years, 10 years, 15 and 20 years. We presented a lot of these certificates at the weekend, and more will be sent to those who weren’t there, though we are only looking at those who are currently active. Two things to note: we don’t always have complete records for the early years, so for sea staff we looked for their first voyage *in a staff berth* on board an OYT South (not Ocean Youth Club) vessel. If you think we have got your start date wrong, you can appeal! The second thing is that certificates are in 5-year increments only, so if, for example, you are currently active and have been with us for 8 years, you should get a 5-year certificate now, and a 10-year certificate in a couple of years when that falls due.
The second is an idea for an annual award in memory of Brian Eyres, for a volunteer aged over 25, to start next year, and we used the weekend to begin consultations about how to organise this award. It might be an opportunity for volunteers and staff to nominate someone who has really gone above and beyond in any particular season.
The reason the Brian Eyres Award will be aimed at volunteers aged over 25 is that we already have the Gipsy Moth trophy (a section of the mizzen mast from her record-breaking solo voyage round the world) for our Young Volunteer of the Year, which Mark presented during his speech. This year it went to someone who has been sailing with us since the age of 17, on a voyage skippered by Nic Crawford who is notoriously hard to impress, but who described this person as “A very strong member of the crew, potential sea staff. Always helpful and volunteering for jobs. Initially quite quiet but came out of their shell and was very self-motivated. They lead main and staysail hoists at the end of the voyage with minimal supervision from staff.” They did some staff training in crew berths, during which Holly as skipper said they were “Super keen and strove to tick off things from their bosun assessment, enjoying the chance to be lowered over the side in an MOB drill. They have a very calm and empathetic manner which will make them a good fit for working with young people.” As soon as they started sailing in a staff berth, another skipper, Diggory, signed off their bosun assessment – and Mark himself signed them off as a third mate the very next week! And it’s not just skippers who have been impressed: when Josh is on relief, the list of people in whose care he is truly happy to leave his engine and generator is not a long one, but this person is definitely on Josh’s trusted list. They were a contender for Young Volunteer of the Year award last year, but this year they became the undoubted winner by joining the core refit team as a full-time volunteer for the whole winter and proving so valuable but that all the team say it has been more like having an extra member of staff than another volunteer. So the winner this year is Jack Thompson – enthusiastic, reliable, skilled, trustworthy and a very popular and lovely person to have on the team!
The runner-up this year is Keri Hammond, an exceptionally talented young sailor who became a third mate in 2024 and then a second mate at the start of last season. By the middle of the year, Gotch was already flagging her up as someone he thought should be moving towards first mate training. We encouraged her to apply for a Trinity House bursary to get her qualifications and she’s definitely a talent to watch for the future!
On Sunday people split into two groups with some completing or renewing an RYA First Aid Qualification with Tony Salmon while others did a session on sail repair with Mark Matthews.
Special thanks to Lynne and the office team (Annette, Jo and Richard) for all their efforts and little extra touches to make the weekend such a success.
We had more interest in the RYA first aid qualification than we could fit on the standard training weekend, so we added an additional RYA first aid course on Sunday 1st March in Southampton, which still has a few spaces. Price £80 with lunch, the same as the training weekend first aid. Contact office@oytsouth.org if you would like to join!
* Volunteer sea staff bookings – new April vacancy
Please do get in touch if you can help with any of these:
2-6 April, Southampton – qualified second mate or experienced third mate
16 and 17 May – qualified watchleaders for day sails
18 and 19 June day sails, Southampton – qualified watchleaders (unusually these are Thurs/Fri – we’ve normally only done day sails at weekends, but these have been requested by clients)
11-18 July, Poole to Brixham – qualified watchleader
31 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton – qualified watchleader
11-15 Sept, Southampton – qualified second mate
16-20 Sept, Southampton – qualified second mate or experienced third mate
5-9 Oct, Southampton – qualified watchleader
9-11 Oct – Southampton – experienced sea staff needed for mates’ training and selection weekend
19-23 Oct, Southampton – qualified watchleader
23-27 Oct, Southampton – qualified watchleader
28 Oct – 1 Nov, Southampton – qualified watchleader
2 Nov – qualified watchleaders for day sail
Some of the later voyages will inevitably sort themselves out in due course because people who aren’t currently qualified watchleaders will have qualified by then!
Please send offers or questions to webmaster1@oytsouth.org.
* Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026
The 2026 programme is on the website and there is an availability list here.
You may be aware that most of our voyages are filled by organised groups, often including disadvantaged and vulnerable young people. Currently all 2026 group voyages either have confirmed bookings or have been pencilled by a client (but anyone still interested in a 2026 group booking for up to 15 people, please ask, just in cases one of the pencilled voyages becomes available again).
However, in school holidays we always reserve a few voyages for individual bookings, where young people can mix with others and hopefully make new friends while enjoying an adventure, earning a sailing qualification, perhaps completing a DofE Gold residential, or even earning a recommendation to join our team of young sailing volunteers. If you know anyone aged 11-25 who might enjoy a voyage, please do spread the word. There is a leaflet here which you can print out and share with people, or you can direct them to the availability page or the introduction to sailing with us.
The current list of individual voyages available to book is as follows:
§ 7-12 April, Southampton to Southampton, 5 nights, age 11-18, £645 per person – last few places possibly available tbc
* 4-10 July, Southampton to Poole, 6 nights, age 15-25, £760 per person
* 19-24 July, Brixham to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £645 per person – close to full!
* 31 July – 5 August, Brixham to Brixham, 5 nights, age 11-25, £645 per person
§ 12-16 August, Brixham to Brixham, 4 nights, age 11-16, £540 per person
* 24-30 August, Brixham to Poole, 6 nights, age 11-25, £760 per person – provisionally fully-booked, please ask if you want to join the waiting list!
31 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton, 4 nights, age 11-25, £540 per person
§ UK-only, aimed at younger people and for those who don’t have a passport. Other individual voyages MAY sail to France if we are lucky with the weather, and therefore passports will be required unless you enquire and we specifically advise otherwise; or we may visit the Channel Islands for which you must have an approved form of ID (please ask) but not necessarily a passport.
* Voyages lasting 5 nights or more are usually suitable for Duke of Edinburgh Award Gold Residentials (provided you don’t know more than 50% of the others in the crew). Four-night voyages, because of the start and finish times, are unlikely to give you enough time on board to meet the Residential criteria. PLEASE ASK if you are at all uncertain about whether a particular voyage is right for your DofE Award, and make certain when you book that we are aware that you are aiming to complete your Residential.
For all these voyages, including those which start and finish in the same place, the exact itinerary is determined only once the young people join the boat, depending on the weather forecast and what everyone wants to do. These decisions are made as a team, with the skipper explaining safe and sensible options for the week, and the young people having a say in the final plan.
Adult voyages
We have two adult weekend voyages on the 2026 programme.
24-26 April 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening) – fully-booked, please ask if you want to join the waiting list in case anyone has to drop out!
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! Contact us to ask about booking.
Refit volunteers’ weekend 7th and 8th March – come and help us clean the boat and get all the sails and kit back on board for the new season!
The South Coast Boat Show, run by our major sponsors MDL Marinas, will take place in Ocean Village from Friday 8th to Sunday 10th May 2026 and Prolific will once again be at the heart of the show – this time for all three days. We will need lots of volunteers to show visitors around, hand out leaflets and sell tea, coffee and bacon rolls for charity funds! Email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you can help with this. In addition to adult volunteers, it’s always good to have a few young people with us at this show who have recently sailed with us and can chat to visitors about it. Last year one teenage recent crew member came to the show, met the senior MDL team and ended up getting a job in the marina!
The 2026 OYT South AGM and Curry Night will be on Saturday 7th November.
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Peter Dixon Trust for a very generous contribution towards Prolific’s standing rigging; and to the Association of Sail Training Organisations and John Hicks for their contributions. We are also still getting donations for the bursaries fund in memory of Ewan Hind; and we had a very generous donation for another In Memoriam Fund, for Steve Katz, with this message: “I am Steve’s daughter and chose Ocean Youth Trust for Dad’s tribute because he went on a number of voyages with OYT as a helper (over 30 years ago). It was something he found very rewarding. He often spoke of a young person who had never been abroad before being sent off to buy croissants after a channel crossing and the excitement and nerves of that adventure. Dad was a very keen sailor throughout his life (predominantly dinghy sailing but also bigger boats when he could) so will also have enjoyed the sailing for himself!”
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. 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 £2,800 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.
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.