Cruising Club of America Names Medal Recipients

Nigel Calder and Cole Brauer are among the sailors recognized by the Cruising Club of America with their 2024 award medals.

Calder, a Damariscotta resident, received the Diana Russell Award for Innovation in recognition of his “extensive knowledge, research, development, and production of advanced electrical systems for yachts,” according to the CCA’s announcement.

The CCA notes Calder, who has cruised extensively with his family, has played a critical role in developing standards for marine electrical and propulsion systems for the American Boat and Yacht Council as well as its European counterparts. He is a well-known author of technical books for cruising sailors. The CCA in particular notes his “innovative integral power-generating system that uses excess diesel engine power for large battery charging, eliminating the need for a generator onboard yachts.”

The CCA’s Young Voyager Award went to Brauer, a 30-year-old sailor who lives in Newport, Rhode Island, and who made history at the age of 29 by becoming the first American woman to sail around the world, non-stop, singlehanded. In doing so, she earned a second-place finish in the Global Solo Challenge race, setting a 130-day pace aboard the Class 40 FIRST LIGHT. Brauer began sailing in Boothbay Harbor and after college taught sailing at the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club.

Other 2024 CCA recipients include:

Blue Water Medal winner Leiv Poncet, whose solo voyages include “his circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean, voyages from the Falkland Islands to the Aleutian Islands, and remarkable, first-ever, high-latitude sea-kayaking trips. His sailing achievements are further highlighted by his use of the 38-foot steel sloop, PEREGRINE, a French Trireme model, which has taken him to places like South Georgia and beyond.”

Carter Bacon has earned the Rod Stephens Seamanship Trophy for “his meritorious handling of the sinking of his classic 50-foot K. Aage Nielsen sloop SOLUTION during the return sail after the 2024 Newport Bermuda Race.” Bacon hails from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Finley Perry, of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, is winner of the Far Horizons Award. Noted the CCA, “After a couple decades of cruising from Maine to Newfoundland in his 1949 Hinckley Sou’wester 34, Perry purchased an Aage Nielsen 46 named ELSKOV in 1998 and sailed her from Maine to Denmark, and up the coast of Norway to Tromsø. He sailed to Spitzbergen in 2003, reaching 80 degrees north latitude, then crossed to Iceland, southern Greenland, and Labrador. In 2006, Perry cruised the west coast of Greenland, past Disko Bay to Uummannaq Fjord at 71 north latitude, then crossed Davis Strait and explored uncharted Hoare Bay on the Cumberland Peninsula of east Baffin Island.

Another notable voyage, in 2013, covered 3,000 miles from Baddeck, Nova Scotia, into Hudson Strait as far as Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset) at the southwest tip of Baffin Island.

The Richard S. Nye Trophy was handed to William E. “Bill” Cook for his distinguished career in yacht design. The CCA release notes, “His design of the New York 36 resulted in a class of more than 60 boats. MATADOR 2 was a novel design that won the world maxi championships three years in a row. The 53-foot WHIZZBANG was a different sort of champion, a pure cruiser in the form of a versatile motorsailer that crossed the Atlantic and back.

Cook own sailing includes multiple cruises in Europe and high latitudes, and he served as commodore of the CCA's Boston Station.

You’ll find more about the CCA’s annual prizes at CCA Awards & Trophies.