The Cruising Club of America has announced 2025’s winners of the Blue Water Medal, the Rod Stephens Seamanship Trophy and four other awards for exceptional achievements in sailing, cruising and voyaging. The CCA awards recognize amateur sailors for “adventurous use of the seas” and are among the most prestigious honors in sailing.
A Man of the Sea
The Blue Water Medal was inaugurated in 1923 to reward meritorious seamanship. Previous recipients include Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Francis Chichester, Bernard Moitessier, Jeanne Socrates
and Kirsten Neuschäfer. Now, Pete Hill joins the list. Hill, 75, was notified of the award while cruising in New Caledonia aboard his 38-foot, junk-rigged catamaran China Moon. “I am blown away by this,” he said. “This is such an honor.”
Hill earned the Blue Water Medal for “more than 50 years of no-frills ocean voyaging,” according to the CCA. His boats are simple and reliable, because Hill relies on skills and seamanship rather than technology. His philosophy has been inspirational to a yachting community of minimalists.
Hill has built most of his boats himself. In the early 1970s, he and his first wife, Annie (who won the 2009 Blue Water Medal with partner Trevor Robertson), cruised along the North Atlantic Circuit in a 27-foot catamaran. The couple then built a 34-foot Benford-designed plywood dory to explore the high latitudes and the tropics of the Atlantic. Hill cruised Badger, a schooner-rigged junk, for nearly 20 years. That boat convinced him of the value of the junk rig.
In 2002, he designed and built China Moon, a 34-foot catamaran with a “bi-plane” rig—a single junk-rigged mast in each hull. He sailed her for four years, then delivered her, singlehanded, from Baltimore to her new owner in Brazil, and onward with that owner to Tasmania. He completed some 10,000 miles in 73 days.
Hill then sailed the junk-rigged Kingfisher 22 Shanti in the 2006 Jester Challenge, a singlehanded passage from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island, that’s designed for boats from 20 to 30 feet. Hill’s was one of only two boats that finished. He navigated with a plastic sextant and a handheld GPS, which came in handy when approaching Newport in dense fog after 44 days at sea.
Hill built several other boats after the Jester Challenge and completed several more extended cruises around the Atlantic. But he considers China Moon the best boat he’s owned, so when she came up for sale in 2025, he bought her back, did a refit and set out for New Zealand. He and his third wife, Linda Crew-Gee, are now cruising in the Southwest Pacific.
Man Overboard
When a 40-knot squall hit the Bayview Mackinac Race in Michigan in July 2025, Pete Pryce, 72, was washed overboard from Trident, a Santa Cruz 70, into Lake Huron. Trident was knocked flat for several minutes, and by the time she was righted, Pryce was out of sight. He wasn’t wearing a life jacket, but a crewmember had thrown him a Dan buoy. The crew on that boat then broadcast a man-overboard alert.
Philip “Greg” Velez, skipper of Amante 2, a Farr 49, heard the Mayday and immediately took action. Velez altered course to follow Trident’s track to the point where Pryce had gone overboard. There was no sign of him at first, but after following a search pattern for 50 minutes, the Amante 2 crew spotted Pryce clinging to the Dan buoy. Using a Lifesling, they scooped him out of the water on the first pass.
“Once we found him, the retrieval was the easy part,” Velez said. “The crew made it look like they were picking up a water-skier. I am unbelievably proud of my crew.”
Once aboard and fitted out with dry clothes, foul weather gear and an inflatable PFD, Pryce insisted that Velez and Amante 2 finish the race. They placed third in their class on corrected time.
For the rescue of Pryce, Velez was awarded the CCA’s Rod Stephens Seamanship Trophy for 2025. The trophy recognizes a sailor for an act of seamanship that significantly contributes to the safety of a yacht, or one or more individuals, at sea.
Also Honored
Along with Hill and Velez, several other sailors were honored with CCA awards. Tamara Klink, 28, of São Paulo, Brazil, received the 2025 Young Voyager Award for her singlehanded passages beginning at age 22. In 2023-24, she overwintered in Greenland in sea ice, the first female sailor to do so alone.
Peter Willauer won the Diana Russell Award, given to a CCA member in recognition of innovation in sailing design, methodology, education, training, safety and the adventurous use of the sea. Willauer is the founder of the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School. He sailed and raced extensively, and for 15 years lived aboard his J/42 sailboat.
Christopher and Molly Barnes received the Far Horizons Award. The Barnes family, including sons Porter and Rabbit, made a three-year, 36,000-mile circumnavigation of South America from 2013 to 2016.
Doug and Dale Bruce were awarded the Richard S. Nye Trophy for bringing distinction to the club through meritorious service. The Bruces rewrote the CCA Cruising Guide to Newfoundland, edited Voyages, the club’s annual magazine, for seven years, and have written or edited several other club cruising guides and publications.
This article was originally published in the March 2026 issue
