The Cruising Club of America (CCA) has selected Peter Willauer of Falmouth, Maine, to receive the 2025 Diana Russell Award. This award goes to a club member in recognition of innovation in sailing design, methodology, education, training, safety, and the adventurous use of the sea.
Willauer, who was 90 when he was informed of the honor before he passed away November 6, 2025, was a key innovator in experiential education over several decades. Perhaps his most important contribution has been the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, and the subsequent Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership, whose mission is to “integrate scientific research and education to develop leaders prepared to address environmental issues in a rapidly changing world.”
“I always told the students at their last debrief before departing the island that their Outward Bound course was only just beginning,” he said. “I received countless communications from former students about how their course still impacts their lives many years later. On a transatlantic in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean 10 years ago, a sailor on a boat within SSB range of us heard me talking on the radio to our weather router and interrupted and asked ‘Is that Peter Willauer?’ When I said ‘Yes’, he said ‘I was on a course on Hurricane in 1972, and I’m out here now because of that experience. I just want to thank you.’”
In founding and leading programs that have become lasting institutions, Willauer innovated new ways of educating young people that incorporate seamanship, leadership, scientific research, and life skills. That these types of programs have become more widespread today is a testament to the creative energies of Willauer and his colleagues over the decades.
After working with the Leon Bean Mountain Center in Bethel, Maine, Willauer first established the Baltimore-Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound Center, as well as a sea program in the Florida Keys and, beginning in 1974, five Florida bases for programs for adjudicated youth. In 1986, he started the Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center as part of Hurricane Island Outward Bound School (HIOBS). Willauer was the founder and president of the HIOBS and was also a key contributor to the construction of the school’s Rockland, Maine, base. The organization is known for its experiential leadership education, rock climbing, ropes course, sailing, and pulling boat programs.
A celestial navigator, Peter was nominated and joined CCA in 1959. He sailed extensively, both cruising and racing along the U.S. East Coast and in the West Indies, with two transatlantic crossings, 20 Bermuda races and another 10 passages to Bermuda. With his wife, Carol, he lived for 15 years aboard Eight Bells, their J/42 sailboat and logged 80,000 miles, and then for another five years on their trawler Eight Bells.
