Daria Blackwell, Alex Blackwell, Moira Bentzel, Tim Goodyear, Fiona Jones, Guy Chester

This year, the OCC Award recognises a group of members who collectively provided immensely valuable services to both members and the cruising community as a whole in response to the novel Coronavirus pandemic. They coordinated, monitored, tracked, assisted virtually and arranged real-time assistance, to hundreds of sailors both in the Atlantic and the Pacific who were undertaking hazardous voyages because of the pandemic and often with hurricane and cyclone seasons threatening. These sailors included many OCC members but also many non-members only too glad to have their help, often from countries not well represented amongst our members, some of whom have incidentally joined the Club since. It goes without saying that the reputation of the Club was also greatly enhanced as a result of their efforts. It cannot be too highly emphasized what a tremendous and often literally life-saving job they did, coordinating too with official national rescue services in the USA, UK and the Azores. Many sailors owe their gratitude. On 9 January 2021, The Royal Cruising Club recognised their efforts by awarding the OCC their Medal for Services to Cruising for 2020.