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Facilitating the development of life skills through adventurous activity

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As a registered charity, Adventures Offshore relies heavily on the goodwill of its volunteers, donors and other supporters. All of our voyages and the vast majority of the behind the scenes work are undertaken by our small army of dedicated volunteers. We are funded entirely by the cruise fees we charge and donations.

How we are funded

Running our organisation and our keeping our boats sailing is an expensive business. As a registered charity, we aim to keep our costs low so that we are able to make our voyages as accessible as possible and ensure that they are not just available to the well off. We maintain a bursary fund for this purpose, to help subsidise our cruise fees.

Cruise fees - the fees that crew pay to sail with us - are our primary source of income, but we also aim to attract additional funding in order to keep these prices down, as well as donations of or discounts on equipment and services.

There are many varied costs that we incur during a typical sailing season, such as:

• Servicing of critical safety equipment
• Scheduled and unscheduled equipment maintenance and replacement
• Insurances and regulatory costs
• Professional fees for vessel surveys and specialist maintenance tasks
• Food and other domestic consumables
• Fuel, oil and other boat consumables
• Replacement sails and running rigging
• Office and administrative costs

Do you feel that you or the organisation you represent may have something to offer? Whether a professional service, product discount or financial support, please click to contact us.

Embark on a new adventure as a volunteer with Adventures Offshore

At Adventures Offshore we’re keen to encourage more people to get involved with our work and are confident that you will enjoy volunteering with our unique organisation.

The hard work and dedication of our team of volunteers enables us to keep our costs as low as possible, meaning that we are able to make best use of limited resources and take as many young people as possible offshore sailing.

Of course, for safety and regulatory reasons, we do have various minimum requirements for our sailing, such as professional sailing qualifications and undergoing regular training. All afterguard are assessed for their suitability before being offered a role.

But it isn’t just about the sailing - enthusiasm and a desire to help is more important than pure on-the-water experience. Our volunteers span all age ranges and include roles both on and off the water; whether its taking command of one of our vessels at sea, stocking the boats with the food supplies necessary to feed a hungry crew, promoting our work to schools and youth groups, or helping with administration.

But no one would volunteer with us if they didn’t enjoy it themselves! Volunteering with Adventures Offshore is sociable, fun and rewarding. There are some incredible sailing opportunities which many of our volunteers are able to take advantage of, such as sailing all over Europe or competing in the Tall Ships Races. We also have an annual training day followed by a popular formal dinner, which is a great occasion for everyone involved with Adventures Offshore to get together at the same time.

We also place a significant emphasis on the development of our sailing volunteers, aiming to help build their experience and get them through the professional qualifications necessary to become a qualified mate, and ultimately skipper, on board our boats.

Shore based support

There is a lot of “behind the scenes” work that goes into the day to day running of Adventures Offshore and we always welcome offers of help with any of these tasks. From fundraising or sitting on the board of trustees, to running the website or helping to promote Adventures Offshore; there is an enormous range of important shore based tasks that help to keep the boats sailing. So whether you live locally to our Ipswich base and can help to buy food stocks for our hungry crew, or have specialist boat maintenance skills, we’d love to hear from you.

Contact us about volunteering >>

On the water

We have a team of professionally-qualified but volunteer skippers and mates that sign up to lead voyages throughout the season, and are always looking for the right people to join the team. We also ask afterguard to attend an annual training session and a small number of refit (maintenance) days, which is important for enabling you to be completely familiar with the boats.

In return, once accepted as volunteer afterguard, there are fantastic opportunities to progress your sailing skills by taking part in voyages in UK waters and further afield. Sail training is a uniquely challenging, special and particularly rewarding way of sailing and our volunteers return year after year because of the fantastic opportunities available through Adventures Offshore.

• Experienced sailors

We are particularly interested to hear from experienced sailors, already part-qualified to Coastal Skipper/Yachtmaster Coastal level and with an interest in youth work. It is important to remember that we are looking for more than just raw sailing skills - our work with young people and training inexperienced crews presents unique challenges, and it is important that our afterguard are suited to the role.

The first step for experienced sailors is to undertake an introductory weekend. This will enable you to find out more about how we operate; as well as enabling us to find out about you and whether you will be suited to sailing with us. You may then be invited back on further voyages to enable you to familiarise yourself with our boats and procedures, before being fully accepted as either a skipper or mate dependent on your skills, experience and qualifications.

• Crew development

Many of our current afterguard first sailed with Adventures Offshore or other sail training organisations as crew, and have worked their way through the necessary qualifications and built their experience to sail with us as afterguard. If you have sailed with us and are interested in progressing your skills to this stage, you may be interested in joining our trainee mate scheme.

Contact us about volunteering >>