When James A. “Jim” McCurdy of McCurdy & Rhodes in 1985 designed the 38-foot cutter Selkie for his family, competing in the Newport Bermuda Race was, of course, part of the plan.
“My father had done Bermuda races since the 1950s,” says Sheila McCurdy. “He would disappear every two years for a week or so. My mother would disappear and meet him in Bermuda. So there was this thing—it’s just what you do.”
It was especially sweet, then, after the 1994 race’s finish when McCurdy called her father, who had by then retired from competing offshore, to report that she, her fiancé and her two brothers had sailed Selkie to second place overall in the coveted St. David’s Lighthouse Division, a result any sailor who knows this race might only dream about. (Selkie repeated it in 2008 and finished second in class in 2016.)
“He was pretty much speechless,” she says. “That was a wonderful thing, because he
