My father, were he still alive would have been amazed. Come to think of it, I am amazed.
Who would have thought it possible after spending admittedly many frustrating hours over very many years, documenting as best we could, the electrical system, measuring all of the components, taking countless pages across the world, deciphering them into some sort of drawing, buying all sorts of brand new switches and fancy schmanzy LED warning lights, printing a new control and dash panels, assembling the bits then, carrying the lot back halfway across the world only to find everything fitted perfectly!
Except for one teensy little thing, even more miraculously, everything worked first time too. In the few hundred metres we steamed today, the alternator warning buzzer, buzzed ever so quietly but incessantly while dear old Mr Perkins was doing his thing, which leads me to a conversation one of us had with Chris last week in Paris.
While the other of us, and shall we call them for the purposes of this tome, her lady friends, were chatting idly about the colour and splendour of our night in Versaille, we of the other gender were deeply engaged in a conversation disecting Chris’ alternator. A conversation one hesitates to add, we’d started the evening before, but were interrupted when he was called away to boil the potatoes and we, to dine.
His new alternator wouldn’t charge unless he put his finger on the agitator wire, and to cut many hours of truly enjoyable in depth analysis short, this turned out to be because his new fancy schmanzy LED warning light did not have enough resistance to tell the agitator to agitate, but we never could work out what that had to do with his finger.
If ever there was a lightbulb moment to be had, recalling that conversation was literally that. Surely the coincidence was too great.
Not wishing to pleasure Mr Perkins every time we ask him to do our bidding, a few minutes of work was all it took to place the old bulb in a parallel circuit behind the fancy schmanzy one, creating just the right amount of resistance to instantly solve our problem, and leaving both of us a little bit stunned.
There is a moral to this story of course:
If you are called away mid conversation, make a note of where you were up to so you can kick off again later - you never know who you will be helping!
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