Rolex Yachtswoman Yachtsman Award 2017
Nominations are open for Yachtswoman and Yachtsman of the Year which is an award sponsored by Rolex.
This voting process is mediated by US Sailing. The organization is known to hold this vote early and these awards help to honor the foremost individuals in such categories every year.
Every member of the US Sailing organization will be eligible to nominate a female as well as a male member and the votes will be taken in till November 30th 2017. The votes are given on the basis of outstanding performance that sailors exhibit on the water as per the events that have taken place in the previous year. Hence, in this case the votes would be for performances seen through 2017 as the calendar year.
These awards are not new and have been around since 1961. At such a time Rolex Watch USA became the sponsor and US Sailing started this award ceremony. Since the year 1980 the awards are given out as an annual presentation by US Sailing whereby the Rolex Yachtsman as well as Yachtswoman of the Year awards is given. Individual female and male US sailors are recognized in this award ceremony as per the performance levels they have exhibited in national or international events.
For the competitive season of 2016 there were winners like Caleb Paine from San Diego, California and Daniela Moroz from Lafayette of the same state. Caleb won the award for being bronze medalist of the 2016 Olympics while Daniela won for being IKA Formula Kite World Champion. Many have even earned this honor several times such as Dennis Conner, Betsy Alison, Dave Curtis, Sally Barkow, JJ Fetter, Ed Adams and several others.
Once the nominations are received there is a panel of sailing journalists who discuss the merits of each nominee and place vote by a secret ballot method from which the individual award winners are known.