In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Refit news and thanks – some amazing statistics and a very special VIP guest!
- * Voyage news
- * Vessel tracking
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings – can you help?
- Updated information for volunteer sea staff
- Funding for sail training staff / volunteer qualifications
- Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026
- Funding available for young people from West Berkshire
- Advance planning for summer 2027
- Adult voyages
- 2026 dates for your diary – including in-season maintenance days
- * Financial appeal
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,900 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
* Refit news and thanks – some amazing statistics and a very special VIP guest!
Refit is OVER for winter 2025-6!
A big thank you this week to Gotch, Sara, Josh, Jack, Joe, Alex, Iori Kent, Unity Bowns, Bryn Marsh, Surya Harrison, Penny Herschel, Lauren McKenzie, Rooby Woods, Steve Lacey, Cathy Lacey, Tom Hounsham, Patrick Kelly, Mark Todd and Keri Hammond who were all on board to get things ready before the first voyage of the season.
We had a session of boat “parking practice” on and off pontoons in Ocean Village. The team also sorted through the oil canisters to dispose of oil accumulated over the winter refit. All the sails were hoisted and reefing points checked. Other jobs included a big sort out and tidy up of the chartroom and workshops and adding leather protection to the lines on the vang and davits. There was an engineer training session as well as re-leading the lines to the sails, and sorting out the lazy jacks on the mizzen.
Big thanks to Xylem who have yet again supplied a load of spares for Prolific’s plumbing: the team would like them to know that we think of Xylem every time we go for a wee!
After all their hard work, we needed a shakedown sail – and who better to join us than our wonderful, inspirational vice patron, round-the-word ocean racer Pip Hare! She brought the sunshine though sadly not a great deal of wind:
At the end of the day Pip had a chat with Sara:
Our team has had a busy and hardworking winter and it was great for them to start the sailing season with Pip’s good wishes – and some fun on the water.
They were so lucky with the weather, and the sunscreen from our lovely sponsors at Saltee was much in demand:
Now that we have reached the end of refit, an extra big THANK YOU to EVERYONE who has helped at our refit since November!
The three paid staff (Gotch, Sara and Josh) worked 217 refit days between them, but a fantastic total of 57 volunteers added another 484 days – making a phenomenal 701 days worked!
The boat looks amazing and clearly none of it would have been possible without all that help. Special mention to the core team: Jack Thompson and Joe Wilkinson worked right through the whole refit; Bryn Marsh, Alex George and Helena Marshall were all full-time for significant periods; Iori Kent came so often that it sometimes looked as though they were full-time; Chris Pryke, Unity Bowns and Juno Hollyhock came regularly; and lots of other people came as often as they could manage. Huge thanks to every single one of you!
If you start feeling nostalgic for the refit, or you weren’t able to come and are feeling bad about it, don’t forget the in-season maintenance days to come this year, when we can recreate that refit feeling!
* Voyage news
Prolific is sailing again with young people on board!
We were delighted once again to have a group of students from The Petersfield School, accompanied by one of their staff. After the initial welcome it was time for the first sailing briefing of the season – mentioning that some strong winds were expected this week:
Everyone learned to fit a lifejacket and use their harness lines:
Then they slipped the mooring lines and tidied away the fenders as they set off towards Ryde on the Isle of Wight:
The young people had a first chance to steer and go out onto the bowsprit:
Once off Ryde they anchored, with dinner followed by some time on deck to appreciate their surroundings. The day ended with completing logbooks and bedtime stories.
On Tuesday they had to head into Cowes to shelter from the forecast winds, but morale was high:
They cleaned the boat, had showers and ended the day with a film in the saloon with everyone sitting on the beanbags with popcorn.
On Wednesday it was gusting Force 8 which meant a day alongside, but there was plenty to do, rigging the ORC ( a smaller headsail for strong winds) ready for the next day:
Then there were winch drills, fire and abandon ship drills, a session of knot-tying and then a walk along the coast path to the beach – which gave them an idea of just how windy it really was!
Back on board they covered some of the things people needed to learn for their RYA certificates: parts of the boat, weather and flares. But it was all hands to preparing fajitas for dinner:
This was followed by a very wet round of “extreme washing up” – where else can you experience the need for full oilskins in order to wash the dishes?!
The evening ended with a big and very loud hat game.
The wind dropped overnight and the sun even appeared so Thursday was a big sailing day, learning to handle the boat in the western Solent with lots of tacking and gybing. Some people went out on the bowsprit.
One of our volunteer watchleaders, Rose MacInnes, was also out in the Solent and took some pictures (including the one used in the header above):
Our crew did a man overboard recovery drill before dropping sails and motoring to anchor off Lee on Solent for dinner.
Then they had a session on preparing for night pilotage and the young people took charge of planning the pilotage to get safely back to Ocean Village in the dark. The red interior lights protect night vision but also help to tone down some sea staff fashion choices:
The voyage ended today – they had sailed 70 nautical miles despite the weather – and you can see their voyage track here.
All the Petersfield group earned RYA Start Yachting certificates, and Joe Wilkinson who has been part of the refit team all winter got his Competent Crew.
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Sara, Josh, Tom Hounsham, Jack Thompson, Joe Wilkinson, Surya Harrison and Sarah Kenwright.
We’ll include the crew’s feedback in next week’s newsletter.
* Vessel tracking
Prolific’s vessel tracking is LIVE again for the season – you can look here at any time to see where we are and where we have been sailing. Big thanks to Andy and Nick Viney who built us a whole new tracking system when the one we used to use was discontinued!
* Volunteer sea staff bookings – can you help?
Please do get in touch if you can help with any of these! Some of these dates are reappearing on the list because no sooner do we replace someone who has dropped out, than someone else drops out!
14-19 April, Southampton – qualified watchleader or bosun
17 May, Southampton – qualified watchleaders for day sail
22-26 May, Southampton – qualified watchleader or bosun
28 June – 3 July, Southampton – qualified or trainee watchleader or bosun
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 – one more experienced member of 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
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, and we hope to have some good new trainee watchleaders to add to the team after the April mates’ weekend!
Please send offers or questions to webmaster1@oytsouth.org.
Updated information for volunteer sea staff
A reminder that we’ve been updating information on the members page of the website – you can see this year’s safeguarding update, and the new edition of the first three volumes of the Voyage Handbook. There are also some useful “how to” videos, as well as copies of assessment forms for anyone thinking about making progress this season. Please do have a look! Email webmaster1@oytsouth.org if you need a password reminder.
Funding for sail training staff / volunteer qualifications
Are you a watchleader or bosun with us and committed to long-term involvement in sail training, already qualified to at least Day Skipper level, and looking to gain more qualifications in order to make progress? The Trinity House ASTO Bursaries Scheme could help you afford some courses, but under a new system starting this year, the application window is 1 April – 30 June each year, with no other rounds, and applicants MUST be endorsed by an ASTO member such as OYT South. If you are thinking of applying in this year’s window or simply want to know more about how it works, please contact us!
If you are not eligible for the above scheme because you don’t yet have RYA Day Skipper, and you are aged 18-29, you might like to have a look at the Youth Council Training Bursary Scheme.
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 – close to full!
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.
Funding available for young people from West Berkshire
Do you know someone aged 11-16 living in West Berkshire who is having a hard time and may not get a holiday this summer? Thanks to a generous donor, we can offer one or two funded places on an exciting sailing voyage 12-16 August, starting and finishing in Brixham. Imagine dolphins, sunsets, beach BBQs (weather permitting!), making friends, sailing under the stars, taking the helm of a big sailing vessel, and earning a sailing qualification! Please spread the word. Anyone interested should email us for more information.
Advance planning for summer 2027
As usual, we plan to publish next year’s sailing programme in June this year. But we have a big decision to make first: shall we include the Tall Ships race from Bordeaux to A Coruna in July 2027 on the programme?
This will be a hugely exciting opportunity for everyone who takes part, but it’s a big decision. In order to make it work without a huge cost to the charity, we need to sell not only 15 places on the race, but also 15 places on voyages to take Prolific down to Bordeaux and bring her back from A Coruna. (The age range for Tall Ships events is 15-25).
We are therefore aiming to secure a committed group booking for at least one leg by the end of May this year, before we publish the programme.
Because the France/Spain voyages are longer than our usual voyages, they are more expensive, and there is travel to and from the boat to add to the voyage costs. So we are keen to not only to see whether any clients might be interested in a group booking, but also to give you extra time to plan and raise money if needed.
There is a lot more information here including dates and prices. Please do have a look, spread the word, and if any group (school, youth group, charity or other organisation) might be interested, please contact us and we can have an initial discussion before we make any firm decisions.
These overseas voyages would only take place for a few weeks in July 2027, so if your group still needs a local UK voyage or a shorter trip, or you prefer to bring younger participants, rest assured that we will still be running our normal programme for the rest of the season, with the usual term-time voyages plus local UK voyages in August as well as Easter and half-terms, and you will have lots of opportunities when we publish our 2027 programme in June.
If we don’t get enough early interest in the France / Spain adventure, it is likely that we will write a programme which has Prolific leaving the Solent in early July and heading west to work out of Brixham for the rest of the summer, as we have generally done in recent years.
But if your group might be interested in a bigger adventure next year, even if you just want to ask questions and consider options without any commitment on either side, do please get in touch now! We can also start a mailing list for young people who might be interested in individual bookings on this France-Spain programme.
Volunteer sea staff: places on any Tall Ships voyages are likely to be highly competitive, but if we sell a group booking for France or Spain thanks to your efforts and contacts, it can’t harm your own chances of taking part!
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.
2026 dates for your diary – including in-season maintenance days
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!
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 for any of these:
Monday 13th April – Southampton
Saturday 2nd May – Southampton
Monday 1st June – Southampton
Saturday 27th June – Southampton
Sunday 23rd August – Brixham
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!
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to Rhys Parry for a very kind donation.
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 £2,900 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 £2,900 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.