Newport Bermuda Race roll of honour gains new members
Sheila McCurdy, John D. Osmond III andJames Teeters have been inducted into the Newport Bermuda Race Roll of Honour.
The Bermuda Race Foundation last night revealed the recipients, with the honour recognising and celebrating extraordinary achievement in the race. The Roll of Honour includes race founder Thomas Fleming Day and Sir Eldon Trimingham, a former commodore of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and leader of the race’s revival after World War I.
McCurdy has an extraordinary record of offshore sailing, having sailed across the Atlantic Ocean ten times and she will embark on her 21st Newport to Bermuda Race this week.
Along the way, she has become one of the most recognised authorities on ocean sailing having served as commodore of the Cruising Club of America, ran US Sailing’s National Faculty and logged over 10,000 miles offshore. For 20 years McCurdy has served on the United States Naval Academy Fales Committee, which oversees the academy’s waterfront training, fleet of boats and racing teams.
Osmond, who died in 2024) served as Chair of the Newport to Bermuda Race in 2012 and was the Principal Race Officer for the next ten years. John was an active racing sailor and campaigned a Frers 45, Brigadoon IV with his partners Perry Harris and Robert Morton. He competed in 15 Newport to Bermuda Races and was a regular member of Bill Koch’s crew aboard Matador and Matador2 (1984-1993).
Osmond was chair of US Sailing’s Offshore Committee and deputy chair of the International Offshore Racing Council. He was a past commodore of the Storm Trysail Club and was twice chair of Block Island Race Week. This year, the John D. Osmond Memorial Prize was established and will recognise the best performance by a first-time Bermuda Race Skipper (Person in Charge) for boats competing in each of the Corinthian focused divisions (St. David’s Lighthouse, Finisterre, and Double-Handed Divisions).
Jim Teeters has been a member and supporter of the Bermuda Race Organising committee for more than two decades. After an early career as a professional dancer, Teeters entered the world of yacht design and racing, contributing to the work of legendary yacht design firm Sparkman and Stephens and five America’s Cup campaigns.
His work in offshore racing rules has been invaluable to the sport, having developed Americap and the Offshore Racing Rule (ORR). Teeters’ most recent contribution to the Bermuda Race has been Forecast Time Corrected scoring, which leveraged technology and forecast models to create a fairer system for comparing boats of different sizes. The Bermuda Race was the first offshore race in the world to implement this scoring in 2024.
Inaugurated in 2006 on the 100th anniversary of the first race, 20 individuals have now been selected to join the Bermuda Race Roll of Honour.
