A new Roll of Honour

Bermuda Race organisers hand out the gongs at gala dinner as part of the 100 year celebrations

Six extraordinary sailors from the Newport to Bermuda Race’s 100-year history will be honored on November 13, 2006 at the Bermuda Race Centennial Gala at New York City’s University Club.

The world’s oldest regularly scheduled long-distance ocean sailing race, the biennial 635-mile Bermuda Race has hosted more than 4,500 boats and 46,000 competitors since the first race in 1906. The centennial race in June 2006 boasted the largest fleet in the race’s history: 265 boats. The race is organized by the Cruising Club of America (CCA), which is the gala's sponsor, and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

A highlight of the gala is the induction of six sailors to the new Bermuda Race Roll of Honour, created in 2006 by the two clubs to recognize extraordinary achievement in the race. Heading the list of these half-dozen greats are two living skippers who set records that very likely will never be broken in the Bermuda Race, which has been started at Newport, R.I., throughout most of its 100-year history.

Carleton Mitchell (below), a writer and photographer from Key Biscayne, Fla., set the most famous record in sailing history when he and his 38-foot yawl Finisterre won three straight Bermuda Races in 1956, 1958, and 1960. Nobody else has won even two races in succession. Mitchell is unable to attend the ceremony and his Roll of Honour award will be presented to him at his home on November 8 by Bermuda Race Chairman Nick Nicholson. Roll of Honour Selection Committee Chairman John Rousmaniere predicted Mitchell’s response: "He’ll say he was lucky. He always says that. But I’ll be keeping in mind his skilled crew and superb preparation. One of his competitors once said about Finisterre, ‘She’s got everything. And he sails the heck out of her.’"



George Coumantaros, a shipping executive from New York, N.Y., is also a member of the initial class of inductees to the Bermuda Race Roll of Honour. He holds the record for the most elapsed-time victories in the race -- four, in 1984, 1990, 1992, and 1996. In 1996 Coumantaros and his 80-foot sloop Boomerang not only were first across the finish line but set a speed record of 57 hours, 31 minutes, and accomplished a rare double victory by winning on handicap. This was Coumantaros’ twenty-third Bermuda Race. He advised other sailors, "Don’t despair, keep trying, and if you don’t win it by the time you are 75, withdraw." He then was 72, making him the race’s second oldest winner after DeCoursey Fales, who won the 1962 race at age 74. Coumantaros will be in attendance at the Centennial Gala to accept his award.

At the gala, Gary Jobson will present a preview of his made-for-TV documentary of the 2006 race, Racing to Bermuda: A Century on the Ocean. Featuring on-board footage taken on eight boats, the documentary provides an intimate view of the tension and beauty of ocean sailing. Racing to Bermuda will be aired nationally by PBS.

The gala’s emcee is Selection Committee Chairman John Rousmaniere, also the author of the race’s official history, A Berth to Bermuda: 100 Years of the World’s Classic Ocean Race, co-published in 2006 by the Cruising Club of America and Mystic Seaport.
The other members of the international committee are E. Kirk Cooper (Royal Bermuda Yacht Club), Kaighn Smith (Cruising Club of America), Owen C. Smith (Cruising Club of America), and De Forest Trimingham (Royal Bermuda Yacht Club).



Besides Mitchell and Coumantaros, the initial class of the Bermuda Race Roll of Honour includes the race’s founder, Thomas Fleming Day (above), who created the race in 1906 on the then-revolutionary premise that amateur sailors could race boats smaller than 40 feet on the ocean. Before then, the only boats that raced long distances on the ocean were longer than 100 feet and had large professional crews. Day’s critics predicted disaster.

Before the start at Brooklyn, New York, somebody provided funeral wreaths so the sailors could perform burials at sea. Everybody was shocked that one sailor was a woman. Thora Lund Robinson was criticized for being "petite" and "frail," but she handled a wild gale and was at the helm when her boat finished off St. David’s Light.

Two other members of the Roll of Honour’s inaugural class of 2006 are the race’s greatest heroes. In 1932 English yachtsman Bobby Somerset and Clarence Kozlay, an American, teamed up to courageously rescue ten sailors from a burning schooner.

Kozlay, sadly, stayed at the helm of the schooner a moment too long and was lost. He is the sole fatality in the Bermuda Race’s 100-year history.

Also honored is Sir Eldon Trimingham, one of Bermuda’s most successful sailors and a key figure in the race’s management for many years.