In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Staff mate news
- * Job ad – Assistant Refit Manager
- * Sara’s leaving present!
- * Voyage news
- Volunteer sea staff vacancies
- Volunteer to help us from home over the winter – chart corrections
- 2027 sailing programme
- Penny Scott-Bayfield memorial service 4th November
- Sea Staff awards – nominations needed
- Adult voyages
- Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
- * Dates for your diary – new dates added for refit weekends, shorebased training and more
- AGM and curry booking! And is your membership up to date?
- Vessel tracking
- * Financial appeal
- Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
- Police Dog Hogan
- Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £3,200 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
- OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
- Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
- New readers’ welcome and introduction
- Receiving this newsletter by email
* Staff Mate news
We are delighted to announce that following the recent job advertisement and interview, Keri Hammond will be joining the OYT South team as our next Staff Mate!
Many of you will know Keri, who has been volunteering with us over the last three seasons. She is currently a second mate but had already begun first mate training.
We are very much looking forward to having Keri on the team: but we will have to wait a little longer before she can join us full-time as she still has commitments at university. She says “Hiya, I am Keri and I have been involved with the charity since 2024. I am really excited to be joining the team on board Prolific as the Staff Mate. I know I have incredibly big shoes to fill though this is just figuratively as I am not sure I would fit into Sara’s light-up wellies. I will be spending the winter and the first part of next year getting the qualifications I need for the role and completing my Oceanography degree at the University of Southampton. Looking forward to seeing you out on the water!”
Keri is not available to start full-time until June next year but we have three things coming together to fill the gap:
First, huge thanks to one of our current first mates, Michelle van den Berg, who is going to join us for the start and end of the refit when we particularly need an extra person who knows the boat well and is highly organised. Michelle is going to be with us while the refit is set up, detailed plans are made, the core team volunteers are settled in and the boat is being taken apart. She is then off doing some winter sailing in the middle of refit but will be back at the end when the boat is being put back together and everything finalised.
Second, we are advertising below for someone to join us as Assistant Refit Manager for the period when Michelle is away, with a bit of overlap.
Third, another of our regular first mates, Patrick Kelly, has managed to secure some extended leave to cover the staff mate role from the beginning of the season until Keri joins and completes her first mate assessment. (We will obviously still need volunteer first mates as well, just as we normally would).
Huge thanks to Michelle and Patrick for stepping in and ensuring that we can operate seamlessly, with people who are already very much part of the OYT South community and have all the skills we need. We are so lucky to have them keen to help, just when we need them!
If you are available this winter and have good boat maintenance skills and excellent levels of organisation, then maybe you can help complete the final piece of the jigsaw – see next section!
* Job ad – Assistant Refit Manager
Since we have generally had the Staff Mate alongside the Staff Skipper and Staff Engineer to run the refit, we need to employ one more person for the period this winter when we have neither a Staff Mate nor Michelle. We are looking for someone highly organised who can help to manage and supervise the volunteers and take an admin load off the skipper, but also with good boat maintenance skills and the willingness to get stuck in and get their hands dirty. They must also be able to drive the refit car. Full details including specific dates needed in December, January, February and early March, with a job description, salary and benefits, person specification and information on how to apply can be found here.
Applications close 9am Monday 19th October.
* Sara’s leaving present
Even though we now have such exciting plans in place for the Staff Mate role, it will be enormously sad to say goodbye to Sara when she completes her time with us at the end of the season. She has been involved with us in a range of different roles since 2019 and we are sure to see her back on board Prolific from time to time, bringing her unique brand of joy and fun. But in the meantime she will be heading off for new adventures and we want to send her off with a good leaving present. Details and how to contribute here.
* Voyage news
The last newsletter left our crew from Motiv8 in Lymington.
Next morning they got up with the sun and slipped the berth about 0720. It was a really pretty morning and they had breakfast on the go and then a truly lovely sail! They sailed downwind towards Cowes (with more chances to go out on the bowsprit). Then they did points of sail exercises before sailing up the North Channel and Southampton Water. A fabulous day of real sailing (and that was all before lunch).
They dropped sails quickly, had bacon and avocado rolls and parked in Ocean Village.
That afternoon they went ashore for showers and played a lot of different games.
Saturday was really windy and quite gusty so they stayed alongside in Ocean Village. They did some dinghy rowing and had tours of the engine room.
They then made pizzas and banana bread from scratch – some young people learning how to knead dough for the first time – baking was a great success!
After lunch they learned their knots and practised what to do in the event of an “abandon ship”.
They went ashore for a walk and a game of football, and then spent many hours playing Werewolf – great fun for both the young people and the sea staff. Many of the crew members took turns narrating the game and did a really good job of it!
The voyage ended next day after 51 nautical miles and you can see the complete voyage track here.
Feedback included:
“I have had an incredible time on Prolific. I have made many lovely stories and memories that I will cherish forever. Thank you crew for everything. :-) … The best bit was probably telling jokes and making people laugh, even to the point someone found it hard to breathe!”
“Loved this trip, learned new stuff, made new friends and got a look into life on a boat. Loved the sea staff. ❤️ … Best bit: working and team work with new people.”
“I loved this trip … made loads of friends. This has been amazing. Thank you all … My best bit was when the wind started picking up.”
“Made a few friends. Staff were super friendly and good at dealing with upsetness and unkindness. Definitely coming again.”
“Thank you Prolific! I had such a great experience and hope to meet all the crew members again! … My best bit was sailing, just in general.”
“Another best bit was when we were making banana bread and cooking pizza.”
And from the group leader:
“This has been an amazing and highly valuable experience for both myself and the young people. Thank you for being so welcoming.”
Big thanks to relief skipper Lauren Mackenzie, plus Sara, Tom Knight, Jack Thompson, Hannah Blyton, Sarah Kenwright and Thomas Neale.
The next voyage was with a new client, youth homelessness charity Step by Step. They joined on Monday and were up for an adventure: given the choice of an easy evening passage to a buoy off Yarmouth, or a longer night sail to Weymouth, they unanimously chose Weymouth! The sea staff were excited too:
It was a beautiful clear starlit night and they anchored in Weymouth Bay in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Later that morning, after some sleep, some of the crew were keen to swim off the boat, and then they headed into Portland to get some fuel, with theory sessions on knots, points of sail and parts of the boat while that was happening. Then they went round to Weymouth harbour, with a man overboard recovery exercise on the way.
The crew had some shore leave in Weymouth and enjoyed the beach.
On Wednesday they sailed to an anchorage outside Lymington. It was a glorious sunny sail at first with everyone involved in sail hoists and steering:
By the time they entered the Solent via the Needles it was dark. They had an excellent curry that night!
The following morning after happy hour they had a fire drill and then sailed against the tide to Cowes.
They arrived at 3pm and went ashore to explore, which they all enjoyed a lot.
An early start on Friday saw them motoring back to Ocean Village to end the voyage. They had done 136 miles and you can see the voyage track here.
Many of these young people had English as an additional language but their feedback included:
“I want to say thank you to Step by Step and all the sea staff … Best bit: sailing without engine – it was not something that was possible for me before trip … Most lasting memory: Cowes and working in a team. English is a second language, but sea staff did so well to get the information for us. I loved the trip and want to do it again.”
“I like it. I come back next time.”
“Thank you so much for everything I love.”
“I really enjoyed and I learned new things. It was amazing trip … Best bit: working on the steering.”
“I have loved it has been amazing thanks so much … Best bit: the skipper thinking in his head about the anchor, and his thinking face as he worked it all out. Also getting to know everyone, that was lovely.”
“Thank you everyone of crew and Step by Step gave us chance to have lovely time sailing and that become a memorable experience … Best bit: sailing with full sails. Most lasting memory: when we finish dinner and then do the dishes!”
And from the two Step by Step leaders:
“The personal development of the young people was very strident over the week, but also the bonding and team spirit that became a feature of this voyage. The diverse backgrounds made this a particularly significant achievement plus the problems of language. OYT South were professional at achieving this with patience, kindness, and encouragement …. Best bit: coming up the Solent with full sails as we were approaching Cowes and watching all the racing boats coming out of Cowes, and coming alongside with a magnificent turn onto the pontoon, which was all tremendously interesting technically as well. Most favourite was talking to you guys about how you were faring with your sailing and getting to understand how you looked at the way you were learning both the language and the sailing skills during the trip and I must say it really encouraged me to hear how you developed your sailing understanding as well as your sailing skills.”
“Big huge amazing thanks to all of the sea staff on this voyage! Their teamwork, passion and depth of knowledge was truly astounding. Prior to this, the closest I had gotten to sailing was going on a ferry – after this week that has certainly changed! I will never forget this trip, thank you! … Best bit: meeting everyone on the boat and having a good time and a lot of laughs, that was really special, and learning a lot of technical stuff about how the sailing the ship works, I really enjoyed that … Most lasting memory: steering the ship in the night with all the sails up, that was wicked.”
Big thanks to sea staff Constantinos, Adam Lane, Josh, Unity Bowns, Aoife Harrington, Niamh Lamin, Katherine Chippett and special congratulations to Andy Grimbleby who completed his third mate assessment.
In the last few days we have been sailing with the Charter School North Dulwich but we will put their voyage news in the next issue when we have had time to type up all the feedback. In the meantime, big thanks to relief skipper Lauren Mackenzie, plus Cathy Lacey, Josh, Rosalie Sanders, Si Brammer, Juno Hollyhock and Mike Glanville.
Volunteer sea staff vacancies
Just at the moment we don’t have any sea staff vacancies which MUST be filled (thank you to all those of you who are committed to your voyages!). But as many of you will know, we normally sail with 7 sea staff but there is sometimes space for an 8th at the skipper’s discretion. If there is anyone who would like another voyage before the end of the season, do let us know at webmaster1@oytsouth.org and we can have a look at whether it’s possible to fit you in somewhere.
Volunteer to help us from home over the winter – chart corrections
We know that not everyone can easily get to Southampton to spend a whole day or more at a time helping on our winter refit, but perhaps there may be people who would be interested in a job you can do at home and fit into odd spare hours here and there over the winter?
If you would be interested in taking Prolific’s charts away and ensuring that they are correct and up to date when we need them again in March, please email refit@oytsouth.org who will receive you with joyful thanks!
2027 sailing programme
Our 2027 sailing programme is now on the website and we are OPEN for group bookings (full-boat bookings for 12-15 young people). Please contact caroline.white@oytsouth.org to discuss voyage options for a school, charity, local authority or youth group.
There are currently a couple of voyages showing on the programme as designated for individual bookings in school summer holidays and these are now open for bookings (one is our annual shorter UK-only voyage for 11-16-year olds, the other is open to people up to the age of 25) but the intention is to add at least another four individual voyages soon – please contact us if you would like to be informed when the full set of individual voyages is confirmed.
There are also two 2027 adult weekends – ideal for new prospective volunteers to come and find out more!
Penny Scott-Bayfield memorial 4th November
Following the very sad news in June of the death of our much-loved Chair, Penny Scott-Bayfield, her family and friends have asked us to circulate the details of her memorial service on 4th November in Chelsea:
It would be wonderful to see as many as possible of Penny’s OYT South friends there. Do please RSVP to psbmemorial@gmail.com as requested but it would be helpful if you could also let us know so we have an idea of OYT South attendees.
Sea Staff awards – nominations needed
Regular readers will know that in recent years we have had our annual Gipsy Moth Award for Young Volunteer of the Year (aged 25 and under) – the current holder is Jack Thompson. But we have never had an award specifically for over-25 volunteers. This season, we are introducing the Brian Eyres Award, in memory of our late Skipper and Treasurer. Brian exemplified the best of volunteering, ashore and afloat, for OYT South as well as a range of other causes – he did so much in his lifetime and this award will be a way to recognise and remember his huge contribution to the OYC and to OYT South.
The Brian Eyres Award is not for long service or similar (we now have a series of long-service certificates for every five years that a volunteer spends with us). Instead, we want people to nominate volunteers if you see them doing something particularly impressive or heart-warming, ashore or afloat, in 2026. This could be something as simple as being the watchleader who took time to turn things round for a scared and unhappy young person on board; or the person who did a tough job in miserable conditions when no-one else wanted to do it; or someone who invented a brilliant activity to raise morale. It might be something which saved a voyage, but equally it could be something that no-one even noticed except you. Please email webmaster1@oytsouth.org with your nominations. Don’t worry about the age of the volunteer you are nominating – if we get anything for someone aged 25 and under, we can take it into account in the discussions about the Gipsy Moth Award (which is a collective decision by all the paid staff).
Nominations can come from anyone – other volunteers, staff, young people, parents and carers, clients, group leaders.
At the end of the year we will ask someone to look at nominations for the Brian Eyres Award and choose a winner to be announced at the next training weekend.
Adult voyages
There’s one more adult weekend this season, and two next year:
9-11 Oct 2026, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £270 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening) – provisionally fully booked but please ask if you would like to go on the waiting list in case anyone drops out.
23-25 April 2027, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £275 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
17-19 Sept 2027, Southampton, 2 nights, age range 18+, £275 per person, adult weekend voyage (Friday evening to Sunday evening)
These weekends are ideal for people who want to find out more about the possibility of volunteering with us – but you are also welcome if you simply want to come along and enjoy a sail on board Prolific! Contact us to ask about booking.
Planning a gap year, or not working over the winter? Join our refit core team!
If you are planning a gap year, or you are between jobs or for any other reason potentially available for several weeks or months this winter, might you be interested in joining our full-time refit team? We will need a couple of full-time volunteers between November and March. More details here. Plenty of our previous refit volunteers have gone on to great jobs in the marine industry – it really helps to have maintenance experience as well as good sailing skills when applying for sailing jobs! And any refit volunteers who want to sail in Prolific can be offered berths as watchleaders, bosuns, or relief engineers. So it’s a great way of developing useful experience, contributing to a good cause, securing free food and accommodation for a few months, and having a positive experience with a fun group of people! If you’re interested, please read the web page and email us with the details requested at the bottom of the page.
We’ll also need lots of casual volunteers helping for a day, a few days or a weekend, but we can get people booked in for that much nearer the time – at this stage we are really just thinking about the core team.
Dates for your diary – new dates added for refit weekends, shorebased training and more
Prolific has planned maintenance days spread across the season and we always need lots of help (skilled or unskilled) – email refit@oytsouth.org to book yourself in – just one left this year:
Monday 12th October – Southampton
The 2026 OYT South AGM and Curry Night will be on Saturday 7th November.
As usual, the AGM will be combined with a refit weekend where we need lots of help to get things off the boat and start the refit clean and organised and uncluttered (!). The current list of planned refit weekends when we need volunteers in Southampton (in addition to anyone who can help on weekdays) is:
7-8 November
5-6 December – prep for anti-fouling
16-17 January
13-14 March
There is no volunteers’ refit weekend in February because we have our shorebased volunteers’ training weekend instead, on 5th – 7th February 2027 – keep it free! We are lining up some fantastic sessions in addition to the usual RYA first aid, GMDSS etc, for those who need their qualifications. There should be some great opportunities to hear genuine experts on topics including youthwork and weather. More details as soon as we have the whole weekend finalised and can start taking bookings.
There are also two more refit dates when we specifically need people for boat moves. We have to take Prolific to Portsmouth Harbour in November to get the masts out (because the rest of the refit is the other side of the bridge in Southampton and we don’t fit under with the masts in), and the same journey in reverse in March. So we need some qualified sea staff for small winter cruises (Southampton to Portsmouth and back) on dates expected to be:
17-19 November
1-3 March
Email refit@oytsouth.org if you can help with anything here.
Looking further ahead, Prolific will be taking part in the South Coast Boat Show as usual, and will need lots of volunteers to look after visitors on board. Dates are 14th – 16th May 2027.
AGM and curry booking! And is your membership up to date?
Our AGM and social evening will be on 7th November – you can see the details and book your curry here.
Don’t forget that although anyone can attend the AGM, you can only vote if you are a member of the charity. If you are unsure about whether you are a member at the moment, please ask. You can pay your membership fee here – either as a non-sailing membership, or as part of your annual mates’ fee for sailing volunteers. There are reduced rates for under-25s, and sailing volunteers of any age who can’t afford to pay their annual fee can talk to us about bursary support – no-one should be deterred from sailing as a watchleader or bosun by the cost. But anyone who is regularly involved with the charity ought to be a member, able to have a say at the AGM, elect the Trustees and influence the future direction of the charity.
Vessel tracking
Prolific’s vessel tracking is available on our website – you can look at any time to see where we are and where we have been sailing. Big thanks to Millennium who built us a whole new tracking system when the one we used to use was discontinued!
* Financial appeal
Huge thanks this week to the Honourable Company of Master Mariners for a generous (and timely) contribution to the Staff Mate’s salary! And big thanks also to ASTO / Hammond Innes for another great contribution to bursaries.
We need a regular flow of funds to cover at least three major areas: bursaries for young people who could not otherwise afford to sail; vessel maintenance and equipment; and staff salaries – please help, or pass on our details to anyone you come across who might make a grant, large or small.
See here for how to make a donation – you can contribute by cheque, bank transfer or PayPal, but please do something if you possibly can. Don’t forget that if you complete and return a Gift Aid form we can claim back tax on your donation.
Painting of Prolific – prints available to buy!
Several years ago our friend, renowned marine artist Colin Baxter, painted this picture of Prolific and people were offered the chance to buy prints. It has been suggested that we should offer another chance for people to buy one!
The unframed prints measure 370mm x 230mm plus border. They will be numbered and signed, and will cost £70 if you can pick yours up in Southampton, and £75 if you need it posted to somewhere in the UK (they will probably come rolled in a cardboard tube). See here to order. Anyone outside the UK wanting to order a copy, please email us.
Police Dog Hogan
Regular readers will know that our Trustee Eddie Bishop plays the fiddle in the band Police Dog Hogan. They are playing in Exeter on Saturday 5th December, and then three nights in London, at the Half Moon, Putney, on 14th, 15th and 16th December. There will be OYT South people at several of these shows – come and join us – tickets here. You can find the band on YouTube if you haven’t heard their music before:
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £3,200 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
We mention Easyfundraising in the newsletter each week and we’re really grateful to those people who are using it regularly, but there must be people who haven’t looked at it, or often don’t remember to do it.
Here’s what it DOESN’T do:
- Require you to buy from sources you wouldn’t normally use
- Take lots of time
- Ask you to do anything complicated at all!
- Produce donations so small you would barely notice
- Cost you a penny!
You simply have to buy whatever you already planned to buy online, from whoever you choose to shop with – but having signed up with Easyfundraising, just click to accept a donation if it’s offered when you shop. It’s often a percentage, which means the donations can be really significant for bigger items – a holiday, a flight, an expensive train ticket etc. For example, one volunteer got a £17 donation when renewing their home insurance. Someone else earned nearly £10 from a VistaPrint order. A few donations like that from a hundred supporters and it starts looking like a really significant total each year.
Do tell us if you’ve got a really good donation from something you bought – these stories help to inspire others. Maybe you even order things online for business purposes and your employer would agree to donate to us like this – at no cost to them but a way to feel good every time they need new boxes of business cards or train tickets to get staff to a conference!
It takes a minute or two to sign up to Easyfundraising: you can do it on a desktop, tablet and/or phone, and you can install a widget that flags up when a donation is available. Once that’s done, imagine you’re looking to buy – say – a rainbow unicorn: just put “rainbow unicorn” in your usual search box, and the list of results shows you which sites come with donations, and how much. It’s up to you what to pick and whether to accept the donation from the site, but a huge choice of sites will offer a donation, often including the site you would normally choose to use for all your rainbow unicorn requirements – and it doesn’t cost you anything, you pay the same price you would pay anyway.
PLEASE click the link now and sign up!
We have already raised over £3,200 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
If you look at the top left of any page on our website, you can click on icons for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok, and these days we recommend Bluesky rather than Twitter/X – please come and join us there!
Please share our social media posts as widely as you can – with the help of all our supporters, this charity is doing some amazing work and we need more people to hear about it. You don’t need to do anything more than share a post, or perhaps add a comment which could be as simple as “I’ve sailed with this charity!” or “I volunteer for this charity!”.
Please note that OYT South has a policy that our adult staff and volunteers should not make or accept personal online connections with crew members aged under 18, or vulnerable adults. Crew members can use the sites to stay in touch with the boat and with each other, but not with individual staff and volunteers.
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage
Open for 2026 entries.
If you have enjoyed a voyage with OYT South and want to come again (and are aged 11-25), please think about entering for this award. You can win up to £500 off the price of another voyage, by sending in an account of a voyage you have already done with us. It can be a logbook, diary, story, pictures, video – anything which gives the judges an idea of why you had a good time and would like to come again. The prize is judged at the end of each season and the award can be spent on a voyage the following year. Entries should be emailed to webmaster1@oytsouth.org or posted to the office. See here for more details of this award, which was set up in memory of one of the charity’s founders. You can also see some previous winning entries.
New readers’ welcome and introduction
If you have recently registered your interest in OYT South, welcome to our newsletter, which is sent out almost every week, normally on a Friday, and is also copied onto the website.
If you have just started receiving this newsletter by email, it is because we believe you have signed up and consented to receive it – perhaps by emailing us to ask for it, completing a form on our website, or adding your email address to the book on board where people can sign up to receive news, as well as leaving comments. If this was a mistake or you simply decide you want to stop receiving the newsletter, just press “reply” to the email and write UNSUBSCRIBE at the top, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org asking to unsubscribe.
Each week the newsletter includes a wide range of news from the boat and from the charity, including details of voyages available for young people; adult voyages; opportunities for adult volunteers both ashore and afloat, and much more. We find that while some people read the bulletin almost every week, many others dip in and out, and read it when it’s convenient – which is why some items are repeated. New items are marked with an asterisk * so that if you did read it last week, you can see which sections you can safely skip.
Please feel free to join in any OYT South activities – nothing here is restricted to long-standing members or people who already know one another. New people are always very welcome!
If you need an introduction to the work of OYT South, you should find a lot of useful information on our website. But essentially, we are a registered charity (no. 1079959) which exists to offer adventure under sail as a personal development opportunity for young people aged 11-25, from the widest possible range of backgrounds. A high proportion of our young crew members are disadvantaged or deserving in some way: many of these sail in groups organised by other charities, youth clubs, special schools and so on, and will fill the bulk of our term-time voyages. But those from more fortunate backgrounds are also welcome to sail, either in groups or by coming as individuals on a mixed voyage. Every year we run a variety of shorter local voyages plus longer adventure trips – sometimes including Tall Ships races during the summer holidays. If you are aged 11-25 and hoping to sail as a crew member, take a look here – and this section is also useful for adults who are thinking of organising a voyage for a young person. Adults planning to organise a full group voyage should also see here. Adults who want to sail themselves should see here.
We have a professional staff skipper, mate and engineer, but our watch leaders are normally all volunteers, who combine sailing skills with an interest in working with young people. You can find more information here – how the system works, how to join, and profiles of existing staff and volunteers.
To volunteer for OYT South ashore, please see here. To help with the vessel’s annual refit, see here.
It is a very expensive business maintaining a boat, running an office and employing staff. If you want to help us, please become a member of OYT South. Or see here for information on making a donation.
If you have any questions, please do email – or contact the office.
Receiving this newsletter by email
Many thanks to all those who have given consent to receiving this newsletter by email. If you are not currently getting it by email and would like to, please just click here Newsletter Subscribe and press “send”, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org.