In this Bulletin
Sections which have changed since last time marked *
- * Happy New Year
- * Volunteer sea staff bookings
- * Refit news and thanks – volunteers needed 17-18 Jan weekend
- Shorebased training weekend – deadline for bookings midday Monday 12th January!
- * Individual bookings for summer 2026
- * Adult voyages
- * 2026 dates for your diary
- MDL Sail Training Awards – nominate an exceptional young person! Deadline 16th January
- Maritime bursaries for young people in Suffolk – deadline 6th February
- * Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage – LAST CALL FOR 2025 ENTRIES
- * 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
* Happy New Year
We want to send our very best wishes to all our friends and supporters, staff, volunteers, clients, sponsors and donors – we hope you are all safe and well and we look forward to having you involved with the charity in 2026. We hugely appreciate all that you do for us, and we hope you are very proud of the impact that your support has on the young people who sail with us.
* Volunteer sea staff bookings
Huge thanks to an amazing total of 79 volunteers who kindly sent in details of your availability by 1st January as requested – it really is appreciated, partly because we so much value all those of you who give up your time to help with our voyages, and also because we now have plenty of information to start the huge process of allocating seven or eight people to every voyage with the right blend of skills and attributes! It really is complicated so please bear with us – we are contacting people as we go along but a lot of bookings depend on calculations like “Person A has offered either voyage 21 or 22 – if they do 21, then B could be offered 22, but then B can’t also do voyage 17 and we still need a female staff member there, and the only suitable bid is from a new trainee mate C, but that’s too many trainee mates and not enough qualified watchleaders …. Start again!” Quite often we need someone to confirm certain dates before we can commit to consequent decisions for other people, so it really does take a while and we massively appreciate anyone who gives us quick replies while we work through the process.
If you missed the 1st January deadline but have since sent in some bids or are just about to do so, don’t panic – we will still try to fit you in if we possibly can. You may find that certain times of year are already booked up as some periods have been very popular.
At the moment we have a few voyages which are slightly short of bids from qualified watchleaders – sometimes we have plenty of offers from new volunteers but not quite enough more experienced people to support them. If you are a second or third mate who hasn’t yet bid for voyages, or if you have bid for some but might be able to do more, we’re really keen to hear from anyone who would like to do any of these.
23-27 March, Southampton
27 April – 1 May, Southampton
22-26 May, Southampton
22-26 June, Southampton
31 Aug – 4 Sept, Poole to Southampton
11-15 Sept, Southampton
16-20 Sept, Southampton
21-25 Sept, Southampton
30 Sept – 4 Oct, Southampton
13-18 Oct, Southampton
19-23 Oct, Southampton
23-27 Oct, Southampton
28 Oct – 1 Nov, Southampton
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!
Once the current round of allocations is completed we will advertise any remaining gaps for both qualified and trainee volunteers. Please send offers or questions to webmaster1@oytsouth.org.
* Refit news and thanks – volunteers needed 17-18 Jan weekend
A big happy New Year thank you to Sara, Josh, Jack, Chris Pryke and Iori Kent for all their help this week, despite terrible weather including snow and a storm. Luckily for Gotch he has been shoreside in a classroom working hard on updating some of his qualifications!
Looking back to the last working day of 2025, this was spent ‘putting the boat to bed’ before the break by emptying and cleaning the bilges, closing sea cocks and checking batteries. The boat also got a big clean and the tops of the winch pedestals were given a second coat in preparation for reinstalling all the winches.
The first day back of 2026 was very cold and snowy so the priority job, after putting the kettle on, was to try and warm up the boat a bit. After that it was straight into dismantling both forward heads and the very messy (gulp) job of removing the old flooring. Definite special mention to Sara and Jack for tackling this job on their first day back! Some of the team from Anthony Forfar Carpets and Flooring visited to discuss options for new flooring. The hob and oven were also tested by making cheese toasties to keep everyone fed.
The floor removal rolled into the next day as Jack finished taking the last bits of old flooring out of the starboard heads. While this was going on, Lee from Anthony Forfar Carpets and Flooring fitted lovely new flooring in the port heads.
Other jobs tackled included putting the winches back on deck and disinfecting all the tools used to take the heads apart:
The team also took the starboard table off to do some repair work on the floorboards under the table and putting the post back.
Last jobs of the day included emptying the saloon bilge and checks on the main engine, generator and pump engine.
Lee finished fitting the remaining flooring on Wednesday. Josh was back on board so he ran up all the systems including the windlass. Fortunately, it was a sunny but cold day, so outside work was possible. The morning was spent doing lots of prep work which included a deck wash, drying the bulwarks after cleaning, putting down protection and then white spiriting surfaces ready for painting.
After lunch the painting started which included bulwarks and winch pedestals.
While that was going on some system fault finding was completed as well as emptying bilges using the pumps.
The rain returned on Thursday, so it was back to the inside jobs. The finishing touches of rust busting on the chartroom room floor (above the engine room) were dealt with by Jack before an anti-rust treatment was applied in preparation for painting.
Roger Bolton, one of our trustees, very kindly dropped off some paint that was generously donated by International Paints so the work could continue. Chris Pryke was back on board and looking at ways to add more ventilation up forward – and he also gave the oven some love.
And Iori disturbed a Balrog in the deep dark depths of the store!
Huge thanks to everyone who has been along to help since the end of the sailing season. The refit is going well but there’s a huge amount to do before mid-March and our staff team and the core volunteers can’t do it all themselves.
PLEASE help them 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, these are the dates when we’re currently planning for the team to be working and needing loads of support:
17th and 18th January
7th and 8th March – post-refit clean, and sails and kit back on board
There won’t be a refit weekend in February because we have the training weekend.
Email refit@oytsouth.org if you can help. Refit volunteers should generally be aged 18+ but if you are 16 or 17 and have already received a recommendation to come back and train as a volunteer, it’s always worth asking as we may be able to include you.
No experience needed – plenty of unskilled jobs and plenty of skilled jobs which we can teach you!
Shorebased training weekend February 2026 – deadline for bookings midday Monday 12th January!
We have been able to add extra provision for all courses except first aid, and we are looking at whether we can get an additional first aid course together on a different date before the beginning of the season, so please let us know now if you are still interested in some training this year.
We are still hoping to run GMDSS assessments (for your radio licence) but so far everyone who has expressed an interest is also doing other courses so we are still working out how to fit in assessment time without too much disruption – please ask if you want to be added to the list of people keen to do the course!
The 2026 OYT South training weekend for staff and volunteers will run from 7pm on Friday 6th February to 4.30pm on Sunday 8th February at a new venue, Foxlease Park, Clay Hill, Lyndhurst, Hampshire, SO43 7DE. As last year, all accommodation and meals will be available on site. Accommodation will be in bunk rooms.
This weekend is open to current staff and volunteers as well as new volunteers who have started the process of getting involved with us and are hoping to sail on our voyages next year.
See here for details and booking form.
Saturday 7th February
0900 – Welcome / housekeeping
0930 – Youth Mental Health First Aid Awareness
1230 – Lunch
1330 – Behaviour Buddy – strategies for managing behaviour
1430 – Office update (Booking system/ membership consultation)
1530 – Tea/coffee Break
1600 – Safeguarding
1700 – Free time before CEO speech and dinner
Sunday 8th February
0900 – First Aid OR Sail Repair (these are both full-day courses)
1230 – Lunch
1330 – First Aid OR Sail Repair continued
1630 – Finish
Price list
This year we have simplified things – instead of a separate price for every course, meal and overnight stay, we can offer all-inclusive prices as well as some separate options. The booking form is available here, but prices are shown below for information.
Whole weekend including sail repairs – £120
Whole weekend including first aid – £150
Day rate (including lunch) – £50
Day rate plus dinner and evening – £65
Just First Aid (including lunch) – £80
GMDSS – £40 course fee plus separate exam fee (cost tbc – currently £76 but it may increase in January) payable to the RYA
Optional add-ons
Bedding and towels – £7
Friday evening meal – £5
* Individual bookings for 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 summer 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:
* 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
2026 adult weekends are open for bookings:
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!
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.
MDL Sail Training Awards – nominate an exceptional young person! Deadline 16th January
Do you know anyone aged 12-18 who you feel should be rewarded for their achievements or inspiration and support to others around them; those who have overcome adverse personal circumstances or shown other exceptional accomplishments? Have a look at how they might be nominated for an MDL Sail Training Award and a voyage in the Easter holiday (no sailing experience needed).
OYT South has worked with MDL Marinas for many years and the Award Winners’ voyage is always a very special experience. This is a chance to support individuals who are facing challenges beyond what any young person should have to deal with, or those who have gone above and beyond to support others. Do please spread the word, nominate a young person if you can, and also make sure that schools and youth groups in eligible areas (the South West, Dorset, Hampshire, Thames Valley and East Coast) know about this programme. Teachers, youth workers and social workers will often know a young person who really deserves this, so it is really worth making sure that those professionals are aware of this opportunity.
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!
Chris Ellis Award – win £££s of the price of your next voyage – LAST CALL FOR 2025 ENTRIES
If you enjoyed a voyage with OYT South last year 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 this month and the award can be spent on a voyage this 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.
* Financial appeal
Big thanks this week to Peter Tracey, Goodwood Estates & Ned’s Fund, Gillian Ellis, Stuart Harrison, Taskforce, Ray Kipling, Claire Killoughery, Isaac Jones, Charles Peplow, S Paskett, Penelope Sykes, Julian Biggs, Sylvia Mence, Felixstowe Master Mariners Club and Anglia Giving and other generous donors who prefer to remain anonymous.
We need a regular flow of funds to cover at least three major areas: bursaries for young people who could not otherwise afford to sail; vessel maintenance and equipment; and staff salaries – please help, or pass on our details to anyone you come across who might make a grant, large or small.
See here for how to make a donation – you can contribute by cheque, bank transfer or PayPal, but please do something if you possibly can. Don’t forget that if you complete and return a Gift Aid form we can claim back tax on your donation.
Raise funds for OYT South if you’re shopping online – we’ve made over £2,800 through Easyfundraising! Are you aware of the size of donations available?
We mention Easyfundraising in the newsletter each week and we’re really grateful to those people who are using it regularly, but there must be people who haven’t looked at it, or often don’t remember to do it.
Here’s what it DOESN’T do:
- Require you to buy from sources you wouldn’t normally use
- Take lots of time
- Ask you to do anything complicated at all!
- Produce donations so small you would barely notice
- Cost you a penny!
You simply have to buy whatever you already planned to buy online, from whoever you choose to shop with – but having signed up with Easyfundraising, just click to accept a donation if it’s offered when you shop. It’s often a percentage, which means the donations can be really significant for bigger items – a holiday, a flight, an expensive train ticket etc. For example, one volunteer got a £17 donation when renewing their home insurance. Someone else earned nearly £10 from a VistaPrint order. A few donations like that from a hundred supporters and it starts looking like a really significant total each year.
Do tell us if you’ve got a really good donation from something you bought – these stories help to inspire others. Maybe you even order things online for business purposes and your employer would agree to donate to us like this – at no cost to them but a way to feel good every time they need new boxes of business cards or train tickets to get staff to a conference!
It takes a minute or two to sign up to Easyfundraising: you can do it on a desktop, tablet and/or phone, and you can install a widget that flags up when a donation is available. Once that’s done, imagine you’re looking to buy – say – a rainbow unicorn: just put “rainbow unicorn” in your usual search box, and the list of results shows you which sites come with donations, and how much. It’s up to you what to pick and whether to accept the donation from the site, but a huge choice of sites will offer a donation, often including the site you would normally choose to use for all your rainbow unicorn requirements – and it doesn’t cost you anything, you pay the same price you would pay anyway.
PLEASE click the link now and sign up!
We have already raised over £2,800 through Easyfundraising – huge thanks to everyone who has used it!
OYT South social media – please share as well as liking!
If you look at the top left of any page on our website, you can click on icons for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We are also on TikTok, and these days we recommend Bluesky rather than Twitter/X – please come and join us there!
Please share our social media posts as widely as you can – with the help of all our supporters, this charity is doing some amazing work and we need more people to hear about it. You don’t need to do anything more than share a post, or perhaps add a comment which could be as simple as “I’ve sailed with this charity!” or “I volunteer for this charity!”.
Please note that OYT South has a policy that our adult staff and volunteers should not make or accept personal online connections with crew members aged under 18, or vulnerable adults. Crew members can use the sites to stay in touch with the boat and with each other, but not with individual staff and volunteers.
New readers’ welcome and introduction
If you have recently registered your interest in OYT South, welcome to our newsletter, which is sent out almost every week, normally on a Friday, and is also copied onto the website.
If you have just started receiving this newsletter by email, it is because we believe you have signed up and consented to receive it – perhaps by emailing us to ask for it, completing a form on our website, or adding your email address to the book on board where people can sign up to receive news, as well as leaving comments. If this was a mistake or you simply decide you want to stop receiving the newsletter, just press “reply” to the email and write UNSUBSCRIBE at the top, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org asking to unsubscribe.
Each week the newsletter includes a wide range of news from the boat and from the charity, including details of voyages available for young people; adult voyages; opportunities for adult volunteers both ashore and afloat, and much more. We find that while some people read the bulletin almost every week, many others dip in and out, and read it when it’s convenient – which is why some items are repeated. New items are marked with an asterisk * so that if you did read it last week, you can see which sections you can safely skip.
Please feel free to join in any OYT South activities – nothing here is restricted to long-standing members or people who already know one another. New people are always very welcome!
If you need an introduction to the work of OYT South, you should find a lot of useful information on our website. But essentially, we are a registered charity (no. 1079959) which exists to offer adventure under sail as a personal development opportunity for young people aged 11-25, from the widest possible range of backgrounds. A high proportion of our young crew members are disadvantaged or deserving in some way: many of these sail in groups organised by other charities, youth clubs, special schools and so on, and will fill the bulk of our term-time voyages. But those from more fortunate backgrounds are also welcome to sail, either in groups or by coming as individuals on a mixed voyage. Every year we run a variety of shorter local voyages plus longer adventure trips – sometimes including Tall Ships races during the summer holidays. If you are aged 11-25 and hoping to sail as a crew member, take a look here – and this section is also useful for adults who are thinking of organising a voyage for a young person. Adults planning to organise a full group voyage should also see here. Adults who want to sail themselves should see here.
We have a professional staff skipper, mate and engineer, but our watch leaders are normally all volunteers, who combine sailing skills with an interest in working with young people. You can find more information here – how the system works, how to join, and profiles of existing staff and volunteers.
To volunteer for OYT South ashore, please see here. To help with the vessel’s annual refit, see here.
It is a very expensive business maintaining a boat, running an office and employing staff. If you want to help us, please become a member of OYT South. Or see here for information on making a donation.
If you have any questions, please do email – or contact the office.
Receiving this newsletter by email
Many thanks to all those who have given consent to receiving this newsletter by email. If you are not currently getting it by email and would like to, please just click here Newsletter Subscribe and press “send”, or email webmaster1@oytsouth.org.