In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * ASTO UK Sail Training Conference – award for Annette, and a speech by our vice patron Pip Hare
- * Shorebased training weekend 6-8 February – reminder of details and (separate) additional first aid date
- * Brian Eyres – funeral details
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings
- * Refit news and thanks
- Individual bookings for Easter and summer 2026
- 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
* ASTO UK Sail Training Conference – award for Annette, and a speech by our vice patron Pip Hare
Yesterday a team of OYT South staff and volunteers attended the biggest-ever UK sail training conference in Portsmouth – lovely to see so many people from different sail training organisations, including a lot of old friends.
The highlight of the day came during the awards ceremony when the Shore Based Staff Impact Award went to our very own Annette Potter, for remarkable dedication including, in the last year, stepping up when we were short-staffed. Annette, you are brilliant and we were so proud to see you going up to collect this thoroughly-deserved award:
Another great bit of the day was the keynote speech delivered by our wonderful Vice Patron, Pip Hare – whose own early sail training experiences helped shape her path in life. Pip spoke about preparing for and taking part in epic singlehanded round the world racing, showing how many of the lessons she has learned can mean something to all of us: defining success and risk, taking responsibility – and becoming the person you want to be. Anyone who hears Pip speak will come away inspired and moved, and we are so thrilled to have her involved with OYT South.
* Shorebased training weekend 6-8 February – reminder of details and (separate) additional first aid date
We are looking forward to seeing lots of you at our training event NEXT WEEKEND. If you have booked to come to the weekend, you should have received joining instructions by email. If you can’t find yours, please email office@oytsouth.org.
We had more interest in the RYA first aid qualification than we could fit on the standard training weekend, and some people 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 were able to add an additional RYA first aid course on Sunday 1st March, venue tbc in the Southampton area and still with 5 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!
* Brian Eyres – funeral details
Last week we were enormously sad to announce the death of longtime skipper, Trustee and Treasurer Brian Eyres, at the age of 80.
Brian’s family has confirmed that there is plenty of room at the funeral and they would really like to see as many of Brian’s OYC and OYT friends as possible. The funeral will be on Thursday 19th February at Harbour View, Lytchett Minster at 2.30pm. Please email caroline.white@oytsouth.org if you are coming, as we are making a list for the family. It will be streamed for those who can’t get there in person – let us know if you would like the streaming details.
* 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 – 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
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
A big thank you to Gotch, Josh, Sara, Jack, Joe, Iori, Millie Hughes, Keri Hammond – and two new members who joined the Core Refit Team on Monday – Helena Marshall and Alex George – so it’s a massive welcome to them both as well as a thank you for getting stuck in!
Helena Marshall
Helena lives in Winchester and has recently finished her 4-year degree at Oxford studying Classics. As part of her studies, she visited both Italy and Greece and described the degree as interesting but hard work! After leaving uni in August last year, a scholarship funded more traveling to Asia including visiting China, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. On her return some online research led to our Core Refit Team advertising, which immediately sparked her interest as she wanted to learn more about boats, having been sailing a couple of times when younger. Helena was invited to the recent refit weekend and was subsequently asked to join the team! After refit Helena is thinking about a career in media or publishing.
Three interesting facts about Helena
- Speaks German and some Mandarin
- Classically trained pianist, having started playing at around 9
- Coxed an ‘eight’ for Balliol College, Oxford
Alex George
Alex is from Bristol and is somewhat of an OYT South veteran having sailed on Prolific in both 2024 and 2025. He has particularly fond memories of the 2024 trip as they covered an impressive 285nm travelling from Brixham to Guernsey and then on to Plymouth before returning to Brixham. On both his trips he received a Sea Staff Recommendation. Currently on a gap year, Alex was keen to join the Core Refit Team, so came down to the recent refit weekend to find out more and was then invited to join the team! Alex is thinking about joining the Royal Navy.
Three interesting facts about Alex
- Is a glider pilot, having set a club record to achieve this in record time
- Fell off a cliff in an abseiling accident. Fortunately, nothing got broken!
- Has drunk a Martini in the Wardroom aboard HMS Prince of Wales
It’s been a short week this week as the refit team, as well as the office team, attended the ASTO conference on Thursday and most people had a well-earned day off today.
It has been a mix of work down below, and on deck when the weather has been playing ball! Jobs tackled include more painting of the bulwarks and sanding and painting of the shed roof and other areas:
There was also some time for the team to enjoy a little bit of sunshine!
Down below has also seen a lot of activity including yet more work on the chartroom floor, and painting radiators, plus more mould busting, including cabins and bunks aft:
Other work has included pulling the anchor chain out of the locker to give everything a good clean and then refreshing the markings on the chain:
The flooring is going back in the Skipper’s cabin, and Sara is clearly enjoying her work on the generator:
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!
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
Huge thanks this week to Kit Power and his family for another very generous donation to the bursaries fund in his name.
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.