attempting to cross the Atlantic.

John T. Schmidt, director of Bermuda-based IPCRe and IPC Holdings Ltd., and retired partner of Shearman & Sterling of New York was lost at sea on May 29.

Mr. Schmidt, 58, who travelled to the Island at least four times a year, had been at sea for nine days after leaving port from Bermuda bound for the Azores.

According to Mr. Schmidt's friends in Bermuda, Mr. Schmidt went overboard off his boat Windcheater and despite frantic efforts to save him, his body was not found.

Mr. Schmidt had over 30 years legal experience, both in Wall Street and as a partner in the law firm of Shearman & Sterling.

A statement issued by his friends at American International Group, the affiliate company of IPC, praised Mr. Schmidt.

"He was an exacting, big hearted, gentle giant of a soul,'' it read.

"His fellow board members always benefited from a degree of practical rationality and incisiveness that is seldom offered in today's legal circles.

"While he was a dedicated and towering legal mind who prodigiously pursued the core of his inquiry, he knew the balance of life's adventure, the spirit must be heeded.'' Mr. Schmidt was on the first leg of realising a life-long ambition to take a two-year sailing trip, crossing the Atlantic before moving to the Mediterranean and the Baltic, where he was due to meet up with his wife, Emily.

His wife, who was also a partner at Sherman and Sterling, planned to join him in early retirement after winding down her legal practice.

Mr. Schmidt was born in Fairmount, Minnesota. His first job was as a paper boy and he was voted in his high school as the most likely to succeed.

He was a Harvard University graduate before attending Michigan Law School. To keep himself at college he worked as a lumberjack and eventually became a member of the New York Bar.

Mr. Schmidt, leaves behind a wife and three children in New York. A memorial service was held in New York in his memory earlier this month.

ACCIDENT AC