Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carauso

The OCC Award (Open to All), which recognises valuable service to the ocean cruising community as a whole, is awarded to Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carauso, the husband and wife team behind the hugely popular vlog Sailing La Vagabonde with 1.29M subscribers on YouTube. Their YouTube channel has been phenomenally successful and has inspired large numbers of cruisers to follow in their 81,000-mile wake. This supports the OCC’s primary purpose of encouraging long-distance sailing in small boats.

Their nominator wrote, “They have done more to inspire others to try sailing than just about anyone before them and have made cruising under sail an affordable and sustainable alternative lifestyle option. They’ve been filming it all on YouTube since 2014. They've been featured regularly not only in the sailing press but also have been interviewed by many general-interest media outlets including CNN and the Guardian. They now have a sailing tutorial that teaches people how to go about learning to sail.”