By: Leonard E. Freedberg
Issue #57 January/February 2026
“YOU STUPID FUCK” I yelled out early in the morning of Wednesday, 8/28/24. I was 81 years old, alone, and had just driven JUDY, my beloved Ericson 38, on the rock at the end of the channel exiting the pond at Cuttyhunk Harbor in Massachusetts.
The rock, on the starboard side of the narrow channel, has its own buoy (which has ROCK written on it), has a green buoy nearby, is on paper charts and GPS, and is described in cruising guides. Also, I had no trouble NOT hitting the rock on several prior cruises or on my way into the pond the day before. More about this event in a moment.
The Handwriting on the Wall, Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, is in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. During a banquet given by King Belshazzar in Babylonia, handwriting appeared on the wall in an unknown language. The prophet Daniel was called upon to interpret the handwriting, and he predicted that the Kingdom was doomed. That night, the King died and with him his kingdom.
I had been sailing since childhood and had owned two sailboats prior to JUDY. The first was a 23-foot Lockley Newport, Bea’s Bunch, which I bought in 1983. Bea’s Buch was named for my mother, who had helped me buy her.
She was a centerboard sloop with a 9.9 HP outboard, not a great day sailor or cruising boat, but I had happily sailed her alone and with my then two young sons all over Massachusetts Bay and as far as Provincetown, about 40 nm from her home port in Hingham. The difficulties of getting her home from Provincetown against winds that were often too strong and from the wrong direction led me to sell Bea’s Bunch and buy Sea Lion, a Cape Dory 31, in 1989.
The rock, on the starboard side of the narrow channel, has its own buoy (which has ROCK written on it), has a green buoy nearby, is on paper charts and GPS, and is described in cruising guides. Also, I had no trouble NOT hitting the rock on several prior cruises or on my way into the pond the day before. More about this event in a moment…
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I hit the same rock and got hung up on it in an outgoing tide. I had to all sea tow to get me off. Sea tow claimed salvage and my insurance company paid them over $20,000.00. Need less to say the insurant company cancelled me afterwards