1934 Blue Water Medal to L. W. B. REES aboard May

1934 Blue Water Medal to L. W. B. REES aboard May

A single-handed passage in a small double-ended ketch from England in the fall of 1933 to Nassau in January, 1934. His vessel was the May, a Loch Fyne ketch which he had bought in Scotland in 1932.

Group Captain Lionel Wilmot Brabazon Rees, VC, OBE, MC, AFC (1884–1955) received this medal for his 1934 voyage. The medal was presented by Group Cpatain Rees to his home club, the ROYAL WELSH YACHT CLUB, and is displayed in their clubhouse at Porth-yr-Aur, Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales, UK.

Rees' biography, Rees, VC – the first of the original ‘Few’ by W. Alister Williams, will be published by Bridge Books in October 2017. It contains a chapter on Rees’ voyage from England to the Bahamas and then Miami, and another chapter on a cruise which he made from the Bahamas to Trinidad. 

Award
Blue Water
Year
1934
Recipient Name
L. W. B. REES
Boat Name
May
Extra Information
1934

Prior Recipients

 

Blue Water Medal

The prestigious Blue Water Medal was inaugurated by the Cruising Club of America in 1923 to:

reward meritorious seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities, that might otherwise go unrecognized.

Blue Water Medallists have included such luminaries of the sailing world as Rod Stephens, Eric and Susan Hiscock, Sir Francis Chichester, Eric Tabarly, Pete Goss, Bernard Moitessier, and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston..

The Medal itself was designed by Arthur Sturgis Hildebrand, a member of the Cruising Club of America, who was one of the crew of the yacht Leiv Eiriksson, lost in the Arctic with all hands in September of 1923