The award-winning illustrator and artist entered his 2009 oil on canvas painting, Squall Coming, Lady Anne Beats To Windward.
The show will be held at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea, near Boston, Massachusetts, from September 26 to November 15.
The piece is already at the gallery and Wademan will travel to the exhibition on September 19.
"The Lady Anne was built in 1907 and she enters all the regattas around northern Europe and generally wins them," he said.
"The picture shows the boat flying the lead boat's pennant, the yellow jersey if you wish, in the Fife Regatta."
Wademan, a professional artist since 1965, said there were just two major marine art awards a year - the Mystic Seaport show and the Royal Society of Marine Artists, in London.
A photograph of Lady Anne was the inspiration for his $9400 painting, although he did change the weather, the water and a few colours to make the painting more dramatic and his own.
"I'm trying to capture that shot the photographer missed.
I try to put the 21st-century person into situations in history and every painting tells a story."
