Awards Season
Awards season isn’t just for movies, and while the ISAF and the Rolex US Sailing awards usually garner the lion’s share of the press, they aren’t the only ones out there. Here are a few with an established pedigree and some established recipients.
©2010 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
On the the 40th anniversary of winning the Golden Globe, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston became only the seventh person in the 85-year history of the Cruising Club of America‘s Blue Water Medal to win the award "for a lifetime devoted to the advancement of sailing, sail training and youth development."
©2010 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
The club’s Far Horizons Award fittingly went to Lin and Larry Pardey, whose first circumnavigation consumed some 47,000 miles. They’ve racked up a combined 400,000 sea miles aboard their now iconic, engineless Lyle Hess-designed Seraffyn and Taliesin. The Pardeys hold the record for the smallest boat to have circumnavigated contrary to the prevailing winds around all the great southern capes and are the only couple to have circumnavigated both east-about and west-about on boats they built themselves, using traditional means of navigation and having no engine or sponsorship.
Former Bay Area sailors Maurice and Sophie Conti received the Rod Stephens Trophy for their 2008 rescue of the crew of the 32-ft ketch Timella. The Conti family — including two young children — were sailing near Suva, Fiji, aboard their Catana 471 Océalys when they heard Timella‘s mayday call that they’d hit a reef and their boat was sinking. The Contis upped anchor and sailed for several hours to reach the site, with Maurice taking a dinghy through a treacherous reef to effect the successful rescue of all three crewmembers. (Read the full story in last Februrary’s edition of Latitude 38.)
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Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger were awarded the Ocean Cruising Club‘s Vasey Vase award, given to a club member who has carried out a "a voyage of an unusual or exploratory nature." The pair have been cruising at high latitudes since building their Van De Stadt 47 Hawk in 1997, and won the award — their second — for their passage to South Georgia Island last year.
Congratulations to them all for their well-deserved recognition.