In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Nine hundredth edition of this newsletter!
- * John Parkin
- * Refit news and thanks – and volunteers needed NEXT WEEKEND!
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings – new vacancies
- 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
* Nine hundredth edition of this newsletter!
Yes, this really is the 900th issue since we began on 21st November 2003! The first edition was born out of a desperate need to attract people to come and help with a winter refit, so not all that much has changed … You can read all the back issues here, though newsletters from 2021 and earlier (the archive section underneath the links to more recent issues) come from our old website and images and links from that site no longer work.
If anyone wants to claim to have read all 900 issues, do let us know!
* John Parkin
Sad news this week as we learned that our Honorary Life Member and former volunteer first mate John Parkin had died on 4th January at the age of 81.
John was one of the very small band of Ocean Youth Club first mates who carried over to OYT South after the Club folded in 1999. We had so few qualified mates at his level that we leaned very hard on those we had, and it is no exaggeration to say that without people like John there is no guarantee that OYT South would have survived those difficult early years. He remained as a first mate until 2014 and then continued sailing with us in less demanding roles until 2019, which meant that he was able to experience sailing Prolific when she was new to us. We will be forever grateful for his commitment to the charity.
John was a very kind man with a range of technical and intellectual interests which he was always happy to share – though his attempts to wake people in the mornings with classical music rather than the usual fare was a new experience for some of our young crew members!
Our CEO Mark Todd remembers that in 2005 when he was Staff Skipper, sailing across the North Sea from Newcastle to Fredrikstad in terrible weather, someone left the lid off the plastic box containing all the galley matches, which became waterlogged and left the team unable to cook or – worse still – boil a kettle! Desperate for tea and coffee, Mark turned to John’s scientific background and pleaded with him to find something – anything – that could get the stove going!
We’ve had some lovely comments since posting about John’s death on social media:
“I’m so sorry to hear this. John was such a gentle soul and showed me unbelievable kindness and support during my time with OYT South. Thoughts go out to his family & friends.”
“I am sorry to hear that John has crossed the bar … John was a wonderful person to have on board and a real pleasure to sail with. A lovely smile, always a kind word and the young people looked up to him. I loved his stories. Rest in peace John and my condolences to his family.”
“John was such a lovely man, and a fount of knowledge. He’ll be much missed.”
“Such a gentleman.”
There will be a service of commemoration and thanksgiving for John’s life at All Saints Church, Vicarage Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7RA THIS SATURDAY 28 February at 2pm, with interment of ashes in the garden of remembrance there, followed by refreshments in the Church Hall. Friends from OYC and OYT South are warmly invited.
* Refit news and thanks – and volunteers needed NEXT WEEKEND!
We can always use help on refit weekdays but for those of you who can only come at weekends, there is a volunteer weekend coming up and the team needs loads of support. We really would appreciate anyone who can come along on 7th or 8th March to help with the big post-refit clean, and getting 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!
It’s been a full house this week! Big thanks to Gotch, Sara, Jack, Joe, Helena, Alex, Iori, Tom Irwin, Chris Pryke, Keri Hammond, Juno Hollyhock, Tom Hounsham and Harvey Henderson.
Last week ended with a flurry of rope work with lines, halyards, cunninghams and anything else that needed whipping!
The old rope was taken off the davits to be replaced and replacement rope purchased. The dinghy was moved around the bow and the refit dinghy was lifted aboard to get it out of the way.
The rain returned in the afternoon, so Joe was back down below finishing off the anti mould work, Jack tackled some of the little jobs in the defects book like replacing latches and repairing broken trim. Gotch started to put the window frames back in the deckhouse.
The new week started with a big deck scrub focusing on removing any paint on the teak deck before work started on the deck box lids. Next on the list was replenishing the first aid kits and taking stuff back to the store that wasn’t needed on board any longer.
Tuesday and Wednesday were sunny days, so the team was back on deck sanding and prepping the deck box lids and touching up the paint on the main boom.
A second coat of varnish was applied to the deck boxes and prep was done to the areas of blue paint around the chartroom, followed by primer. Everyone got involved with painting the scuppers and painting around the inner area of the bowsprit.
There were some surface repairs on the hull around the bow on the hull, and bungs to put in some holes in the capping rail.
Down below the anchor chain was getting some fresh paint:
Chris Pryke continued work on the pump engine, putting it back together and applying heat resistant paint as well as putting back the outlet for the pump and making sure all the hoses were well sealed:
It will be clear from many of the pictures in this newsletter just how grateful we are for the support of International Paint, as their products have been seen everywhere on board lately!
The weather this week meant that we have also been very grateful to another of our sponsors, Saltee sunscreen:
The drizzle was back on Thursday, but before it arrived the new paint was sanded on the outside of the chartroom and the sail tie rails were put back after receiving some love. Down below lots was going on including installing a new oven switch under warranty with thanks to Hugh Elphinstone at Southern Contracts; and more work on the anchor chain including putting some extra markers on top of paint before starting to put it back into the chain locker. Meanwhile Joe was busy varnishing:
The boat flares were inspected and all expired ones were sent away and exchanged for shiny new ones! A big thank you to Wescom for their support.
Gotch was away running a two-day Cruising Instructor pre-course for another ASTO member and some of the Core Refit Team are gearing up to attend RYA Diesel Engine and First Aid courses over the coming weekend.
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!
* Volunteer sea staff bookings – new vacancies
Please do get in touch if you can help with any of these:
2-6 April, Southampton – ideally a second mate but possibly an experienced third mate
11-15 May, Southampton – qualified watchleader
16 and 17 May, Southampton – qualified watchleaders for day sails
18-22 May, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
22-26 May, Southampton – qualified watchleader
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
25-30 July, Brixham – qualified engineer, bosun or 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
13-18 Oct, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
19-23 Oct, Southampton – qualified watchleader, and possibly space for a trainee watchleader as well
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 Lindy Chamberlain and the Royal Southern Yacht Club Trust for another year of bursary funding in memory of Tony Chamberlain.
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.