In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Brian Eyres
- * Tell Beyond podcast – Mark Todd
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings
- * Refit news and thanks
- * Shorebased training weekend – NEW additional first aid date
- Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026 – new April availability
- Adult voyages
- 2026 dates for your diary
- Maritime bursaries for young people in Suffolk – deadline 6th February
- * 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
Ocean Youth Trust South is enormously sad to announce the death of one of our Honorary Life Members, Brian Eyres, on Friday 16th January 2026, at the age of 80.
The funeral will be on Thursday 19th February at Harbour View, Lytchett Minster at 2.30pm – more details to follow soon but please email caroline.white@oytsouth.org if you would like to attend, and then we can pass on any further information to you and we will also keep in touch with Brian’s family. They have said they would be very pleased to see any of Brian’s OYC and OYT friends who can make it and there are currently no restrictions on numbers; but the service will be streamed for those who can’t get there in person. The family would also love to see more photos of Brian – we will share what we have but if anyone has anything you can send us, particularly of Brian’s earlier time with the OYC, please do let us know.
Brian retired as a Trustee of the charity in November 2023 after 22 years during which he served as our Treasurer, shepherding the charity through the difficult early years after OYT South was born from the ashes of the Ocean Youth Club, when money was so tight that our survival was sometimes in doubt. But his time as Treasurer saw things turn around dramatically, setting the charity on the path to the sound finances we enjoy today – and including the successful fundraising campaign to buy Prolific – before he handed over to Martyn Powe in 2020.
Brian first got involved in the Ocean Youth Club back in 1990 when, as part-time Youth Leader in Poole, he drove a busload of young people to join our previous boat John Laing for the vessel’s very first proper voyage after her launch. Soon afterwards, Brian became a volunteer second mate. From there he progressed to First Mate, then a paid position, and then to Relief Skipper for OYC’s national fleet of 12 boats. In this capacity he skippered John Laing’s sister ketch, James Cook, from Panama onwards on the OYC’s round-the-world voyage in 1995-7. He was then Fleet Manager for the national fleet; but this concluded his time in paid employment with the charity – all subsequent involvement was as a volunteer. He continued as a volunteer relief skipper until 2009.
He didn’t just look after our finances – for many years he was our resident IT expert, invaluable in dealing with recalcitrant office hardware of all kinds, and it was not unknown for Brian to be found under an OYT South desk speaking kindly to the wiring. Our former Office Manager Sally Croly recalls often arriving to find only his feet sticking out! He was also key to designing and setting up a voyage bookings system and a members’ database; developing our volunteer base; and founding our Dorset Support Group.
In 2011 when the charity won The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, Brian was everyone’s choice to be part of the group representing us at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party.
In 2015, Brian was awarded a Lifetime Commitment Award from the Royal Yachting Association for his work with OYT South. In the same year, when the charity was invited to attend the first-ever Poole Harbour Boat Show, we held a 70th birthday party for him on board John Laing.
It is a testament to the affection in which Brian was held that when the news came last year that Brian was unwell and being cared for in a hospice, he enjoyed a stream of OYC and OYT visitors. The charity was a huge part of his life, and he was a huge part of all our successes. Many young people who have sailed with us in the last thirty-five years owe a lot to Brian’s untiring work. He will be very much missed.
OYT South CEO Mark Todd said: “There are some people in life who you meet, to whom you owe everything, and for me Brian was one of those people. Brian was the person who accepted my application to volunteer with the Ocean Youth Club over 25 years ago and everything from then on (from starting as a Bosun, to becoming a Staff Skipper and now CEO, to meeting my wife and having our children!) can all be traced back to him saying yes. As a trustee of OYT South and Skipper himself he was always incredibly supportive of my career – particularly helping and guiding me along when I was just starting out. Likewise, he was key to OYT South’s success and helped build the foundations of where we are today. When they say sail training changes lives, Brian Eyres certainly changed mine and many others for the better. Thank you, Brian, we will miss you.”
Many people will remember Brian’s standard response if you every asked him how he was: “Fair to middling!” Staff engineer Josh Caudery once asked him about this and was told “Well, I’d say I’m well enough for you not to be too worried, but not so good you can give me a job. Means I can come down and be social. But get away without having to get my hands dirty!” Ironic given that for so many years Brian was always one of the first to get stuck in if there was anything which needed to be done – and he did so much!
* Tell Beyond podcast – Mark Todd
Ever wanted to know more about our Chief Executive Mark Todd – how he left a successful career in law to get involved in sail training, why he believes in it, and the experiences that shaped him as a person? Have a listen to this podcast hosted by Heloise Finch at Tell Beyond.
* Volunteer sea staff bookings
We are making good progress with the amazing list of over 80 volunteers who have offered to sail on our voyages this year.
We have emailed most people with voyage offers, and in the few cases where we haven’t, it’s because we need someone else to confirm their bookings first – for example, no point booking a new trainee volunteer unless there are people with the skills and experience to train and support them in addition to carrying out their own tasks! So if you have been offered some voyage dates we’d be really grateful for a quick answer so we can go on to book other people for your voyages.
At the moment we have a few voyages which haven’t had bids from the balance of people we need. Please do get in touch if you can help with any of these:
27 April – 1 May, Southampton -trainee mate or trainee bosun, ideally able to stay for maintenance day on 2 May
16 and 17 May – qualified watchleaders for day sails
22-26 May, Southampton – qualified second mate and third mate
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)
4-10 July, Southampton to Poole – qualified watchleader
19-24 July, Brixham – qualified or trainee mate or bosun but must be a woman
6-11 Aug, Brixham – qualified second mate or experienced third mate (we have someone who can do EITHER this voyage OR 17-22 Aug)
17-22 Aug, Brixham – qualified second mate or experienced third mate (we have someone who can do EITHER this voyage OR 6-11 Aug) AND qualified third mate. Both ideally able to stay for maintenance day 23 Aug.
31 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton – qualified watchleader
6-10 Sept, Southampton – qualified watchleader
11-15 Sept, Southampton – qualified second AND third mates
16-20 Sept, Southampton – qualified second mate or experienced third mate
30 Sept – 4 Oct, Southampton – qualified third mate
19-23 Oct, Southampton – qualified third mate
23-27 Oct, Southampton – qualified third mate
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.
* Refit news and thanks
It’s been a busy week for the team, including a refit volunteers’ weekend!
A massive thank you to Gotch, Sara, Josh, Joe Wilkinson, Jack Thompson, Tyler Grant, Keri Hammond, Iori Kent, Chris Pryke, Rob Hill, Helena Marshall, Daniel Eatough, Jon Howitz, Hannah Blyton, Alex George, Dominic Ould, Matt Roe and Thomas Neale who have all helped since the last newsletter. Without all the volunteer support we would have achieved only a fraction of the enormous amount of work we actually got through!
Last week ended with a new layer of rust remover in the Skipper’s cabin and galley bilges around the engine cage, and on the chart room floor – important not to step on the new grey paint until dry:
The mast section in the saloon was also prepped and painting began:
The team did lots of drying and cleaning in preparation for painting, followed by taping up and putting down deck protection and creating a cover to go over the bowsprit.
A big chunk all the way around the bulwarks was painted.
Meanwhile mould removal was applied on the ceiling up forward. Other jobs included tidying the pentagon and some further work on the generator as well as taking off old silicone from the windows in the chart room:
As Sunday was forecast to be wetter, the focus was on the interior, with more painting, anti-mould treatment and work on the generator. After that the team did a big tidy up and clean of all things paint-covered, including brushes, tools and people. The weather brightened in the afternoon so deck work could continue – as well as drying all the cloths which had been used:
The new week started with Josh pumping out the bilges as well as emptying the grey water tanks followed by a good check over of the grey water system. Tyler fixed a broken latch on one of the cupboards in the breakfast bar while Keri carried on demoulding up forwards. Iori worked on new structures to hold the deck boxes in place and Josh has been working on the main engine:
The team then secured all the plastic deck protection in preparation for forecast high winds while Iori did some finishing touches before re-installing the starboard heads. The stereo was serviced, and Joe did some work on the radiators. Chris Pyke installed an external AIS reset button:
Josh went up the mast to remove the ORC stay to be sent away for servicing:
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
There won’t be a refit weekend in February because we have the training weekend.
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!
* Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – NEW additional first aid date
We had more interest in the RYA first aid qualification than we could fit on the standard training weekend so we have been looking at finding an alternative date for those who missed out on a place on 8th Feb, or faced clashes with other courses they wanted to do or just weren’t available that weekend. We’re delighted to announce that we now have an additional RYA first aid course on Sunday 1st March, venue tbc in the Southampton area and still with 5-6 spaces after taking up people from February’s reserve list. Price £80 with lunch, the same as the training weekend first aid. Contact office@oytsouth.org if you would like to join!
Thanks to all those who have booked on the main shorebased training weekend 7-8 February. It should be a great weekend and we are looking forward to seeing lots of you there.
If you have any questions about this event, please contact the office.
Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026 – new April availability
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
* 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) – provisionally fully-booked, please ask if you want to join the waiting list!
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.
Maritime bursaries for young people in Suffolk – deadline 6th February
Have a look here for details of a funding programme for people aged 16-25 in Suffolk, which could help to pay for a voyage on board Prolific!
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to the Charles Burnett Memorial Fund and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation, to Ben Martin and to other very generous donors who prefer to remain anonymous.
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.