I am focussed....
02 December 2015 | you are single minded; he is blinkered
You may remember that a few blogs ago I mentioned that all boats have their little foibles. Birdie 2 is no exception. One very noticeable such foible is the distinctly idiosyncratic 230v power supply. It's almost as if they built the boat and then, just as they were about to launch her, suddenly realised that she should, really, have had a 230v supply wired in.
It certainly looks as if they threw the entire system in as an afterthought. Sockets seem to have been sited purely at random, usually ending up halfway up a wall and as far as possible from any position where they might have had the slightest use. Those places where sockets would have been of maximum convenience, such as near kitchen surfaces or on bedside cabinets, were inexplicably bereft of them. As I expected, this resulted in Liz making a heartfelt and protracted appeal to the Spanner Fairy. (See http://www.sailblogs.com/member/birvidik/?xjMsgID=320389 ).
I capitulated and dug out my trusty multimeter and the electrical tool kit. I ferreted around in cupboards and lockers, contorted myself under floors and into engine bays, plotted out the sites of sockets and routings of cables and scribbled out a list of the electrical bits and pieces I would need. All I needed to do then was find a suitable electrical supplier's, find my way to said emporium and return, triumphant, ready to install circuitry to Liz's demanding specifications.
It was not to be.
I had once again been stymied by the onward tsunami of technological progress. (See http://www.sailblogs.com/member/birvidik/?xjMsgID=206354 ). I had left all my bits boxes on Birvidik 1, and so I needed to build up a new selection of sockets, connectors, junction boxes, fuses, trip switches, wires and bus-bars etc. 'Shouldn't be a problem' I thought and made my way halfway across Amsterdam to where that nice Mr. Google assured me there was a hardware store that sold electrical paraphernalia.
Well, it did. It just didn't sell anything that I wanted (or even recognised for that matter). WTF was going on here? Electrical installation techniques had evolved slowly and comfortably in the fifty years or so that I had been merrily flirting with electrocution whilst simultaneously threatening the stability of the nation's energy infrastructure and keeping the fire brigade in business. I could keep pace with that rate of change.
I had failed to take into account that I had spent the last eight years or so in Greece and Turkey, whose electrical installations and attitude to safety made my half-arsed electrical efforts look like the work of a dedicated commercial aircraft maintenance engineer with OCD.
Now, however, I was now back in Northern Europe where things had moved on apace in the intervening years. All my familiar fixtures and fittings had gone the way of the dodo and been replaced with masses of tiny bits of moulded plastic and metal that you needed a scanning electron microscope to even hazard a guess as to how they worked. You didn't even need a screwdriver for 97 % of the stuff. How the Hell were you supposed to connect the wires together?
It was no good. I would have to swallow my pride, prize open my wallet, and employ a professional.
Enter Richard Stange - marine electrician extraordinaire; mentor, teacher, confidant and psychotherapist. Richard has a wide range of useful talents, including a form of blind, inanimate snake charming. He can make an electrical cable contort its way through a tangled labyrinth of holes, gaps and spaces while completely hidden from view behind bulkheads, floors and fuel tanks. He achieves this by arcane, Uri Geller-like movements and manipulations of the three centimetres of cable left protruding from the wall.
He also knows how all these new-fangled components work. It turns out that everything is now snap-fit, mass-produced in China to infinitesimal tolerances. To connect, you just push the wire into a ridged hole of exactly the right size and there it is, securely connected. To disconnect you lift a lever of about the same dimensions as a midge's pubic hair. Some twenty year old with perfect vision would just about be able see this lever with the aid of a binocular microscope of 400x magnification as long as it's illuminated by a halogen searchlight powerful enough to land a 747. With my eyesight it's damn-nigh invisible.
Nevertheless, after watching Richard for a few hours I started developing delusions of competence and got back into the swing of things electrical. Liz went off to IKEA and left me to it. On her return she demonstrated a supernatural ability to know exactly what I had been doing, where, with what tools and in what order. This was spooky. Burn the Witch!
It turned out to be even cleverer than witchcraft. She merely used her finely-honed powers of observation, coupled with her deep knowledge of my personality, forged over forty three long-suffering years.
I, you see, become very focussed on the task in hand. Any impediment to the completion of the task is removed, summarily discarded and immediately forgotten. Once a tool has been used it is absent-mindedly thrown down out of the way onto the growing pile behind me. This can be a very efficient method of working - the job can get done very quickly. However, should a tool be needed again, I waste half an hour rummaging through the debris around me trying to remember where the Hell I left that bloody small Philips.
As a result of this modus operandi, any worksite upon which I have been let loose rapidly begins to resemble the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The usual appurtenances of boat life are wrenched from their proper places and scattered haphazardly throughout the boat as if by a particularly vindictive poltergeist. Tea towels end up in the fridge. Jars of spices are found, months later, nestling improbably in the bottom of the engine bay. If you take a book from the bookshelf, you're likely to impale your foot with the large carving knife that comes out unexpectedly with it. Throughout the boat tools, components and innumerable pairs of glasses lie scattered amongst the debris, staring accusingly upwards.
It is a well known truism that in any task on a boat, preparation is the key and should take up more time than the actual carrying out of the job. This is not true in my case. What takes up 95% of my time is clearing up. Unfortunately, this is carried out with the same messianic, focussed fervour as is the work itself. Anything that isn't intended to succumb to the Hoover is picked up and stuffed into the nearest available space irrespective of the suitability or logic of the stowage or, indeed, the likelihood of the item ever being found again. Dongles and computer mice are found secreted in the cat's litter tray and the vodka bottle turns up under Liz's pillow. (This last is actually standard practice - it's the first place we look)
As a result, life on board after one of my little forays becomes a game resembling a cross between hide and seek and hunt the thimble. Liz is much better at this than me, despite the fact that it is almost invariably I that had secreted away the item in question in the first place. "Where's my bloody phone?" I will cry. Liz reads the runes that I have subconsciously left behind and paints a mental picture of my actions, as I burrow mole-like through the devastation, throwing all our worldly goods over my shoulder with abandon. She gets to the point in her internal video where the phone is discarded.
With a knowing smile she goes into the galley and opens the microwave with a flourish.
"Here you are dear."
Behind every great woman....
There is a man saying "Where are my socks?"