the disappearing luthier (and the disappearing clients)

French violin from the 1820's. You may be surprised if you knew what it looked like this morning. While it is still a mess, the new pieces of wood have melted into the old and mostly disappeared. Another four or five hours and it will all appear to be the same age, but in better condition than it seems now.

This is the dilemma for the restorer. Your work has to disappear. There is no room for ego in restoration and when a job is done properly there should be a huge let-down for the restorer and the client, because the trouble has all disappeared. What was the fuss about? It looks fine, why is the bill so big? It doesn't look damaged at all....

This work is the antithesis of making an instrument. When you make, it is all about your vision, and your combined ideas for tone and style and outline and chroma and nuance and character. These things will all combine in the mind as you will the instrument into being. And there it will be, an expression of your vision and the limitations in your realisation of it.

A factory or even an amateur instrument (and some 'professional' ones too) will just be the physical combination of a bunch of bits made in isolation, without a central idea wedding them to each other. Some may sound fine and look good, but they are just industrial objects. A really fine instrument will be the result of some educated decisions based upon experience aimed at a particular outcome and put out there to be judged as such.

So when it comes time to restore an instrument of this calibre there is no room for the personality or the inclinations of the restorer. You only succeed if your work becomes invisible and reveals the vision of the original maker. I believe very strongly that makers who don't restore and restorers who don't make miss out substantially in the two aspects of the workers ego. To be able to be 'present' or 'absent' is to know much more about what works. This is a further reflection of the metaphor of the reflex curve mentioned in a previous post.

So, happily, to-day I disappeared and felt the better for it. But I was also aware that there has been less of this to be done lately. I deal with people's discretionary income and there is less to be had of that for instruments lately, than I have known for twenty years. In another sense also, I felt an absence to-day, contemplating the death of another long-term client.

I looked after his violin for 15 years or so (not the one pictured here), but it has a wonderful story that begins with a family escaping 'cleansing' in Europe in the 1930's. It is a challenging story, but ultimately a happy one for those that lived through it. The violin has moved on, and as it happens its new owner is also a client of mine. But I will miss M.- a lovely man and a fine music educator, and the world is a little diminished without him.

talking with strangers

magic winter moment, originally uploaded by robert.ditterich.

When was the last good conversation you had with a stranger? It's a pretty rare thing in the modern world, but every time I take Annie for a sail I know I'll have at least one good conversation, generally when I'm rigging or de-rigging. In fact if middle-aged women want to meet really nice middle-aged men, the best thing for them to do would be to make or buy a Navigator and spend a while rigging it....I'm not in the market, but I do meet some lovely chaps and it's nice to have a yarn and swap a story or two.

Sometimes the stories are even based on truth, if not entirely true, but that is the nature of stories. Connecting is the thing, and the flow of ideas and words comes from the presence of the boat as the ice-breaker, the meeting point of dreams and aspirations; maybe even secret desires for irrational things made solid and readable and tangible, and capable of vague justification.

Mostly these men fish and have an aluminium boat that costs more than I earn in a year, but their tone is dreamy and enquiring, as if making something beautiful is way beyond what the world expects of them, or would allow them. I feel very lucky, but confused at the same time because beauty is cheap if you're prepared to turn up to the process of learning how to make it.

Well to-day I had a conversation of an altogether different order with a creature that lives the beauty that we can only work at strapping ourselves to, and he or she did me the honour of spending some time looking Annie and me over, without the usual questions and comments because it was generally agreed between us that, of the two of us he/she was the true possessor of a beauty that I can only scratch at the edges of.

And I think it was the silent greyness of Annie that caused him to give me the time of day because he carries a few scars from other encounters of a much less friendly nature I think.

I saw him at a distance and ghosted in his direction in a piffling breeze (which turned out as a blessing because I could leave the sheets and tiller to their own devices while I sat on the foredeck and communed with a stranger) and we cruised and bobbed to nowhere in particular while he showed me what it really means to breath and curl the toes. And there's me sitting in pale awkward imitation of a creature trying desperately to find peace and space in a peaceful and spacious place.

He bobbed and weaved and stayed within visible distance and twirled and showed me bits that I never knew dolfins possessed while I sat on the foredeck with a silly grin on my face and a phone in my hand, but blissfully, nowhere to be in a hurry.

After more than 30 minutes of this intercourse the jib creaked, and on the second day of Winter the tell-tales told me to sit up and notice the wind-change slicing across the bay and it was three sheets in hand while I made sense of the wind and away we went at speed. The change brought a 3ft chop and not a small bit of adrenalin as I made sense of it all, hardly turning to say farewell to my new friend, without a hope of writing down his email. I tacked for some miles then jibed in the waves because home was starting to look like the sort of place where a man might comfortably be, and the jibe took me to surfing downhill, weaving and surging before the growing wind.

I had some moments of thoughtfulness but none of the thoughts involved doubting the boat, feeling safe and capable with options before me if things escalated further. Pointing at the headland, bucking and rearing I turned into the wind and furled the jib and dropped the main and surged into the little St.Helens marina on a swell and very, very happy.

Another video of my encounter is on Flickr. I took lots of videos, but will spare my reader the details....

plumb from plum...a bob for Bob

The very Bryan that featured here a little while ago turned up on Saturday with a small bag in hand, saying apologetically that he recalled from a previous conversation that I had been known to hang a nut from a piece of string to find a plumb line, and he just couldn't bear it so he made me a bob from plum wood because it seemed to make a sort of visual sense to play with a pun and kit me out with a proper tool at the same time. I think I had told him that my first job on a metal lathe decades ago at Art school was a steel plumb bob, but it had been stolen in the years since. I don't think I mentioned to him that I had since bought a commercial brass one, which does a tolerable job of pointing a string towards the centre of the earth...I may have given him the grubby impression that I was a wanton sort of layabout fellow who picks up any old nut and attaches it without due regard to art, simply to a piece of string and makes a very un-artful sort of perpendicular...and he'd have been right from time to time in getting that impression.

Such is the generosity of the man that I now feel treated and lucky and naughty all at the same time. That's a good feeling when you've done no-one any harm.

The bob itself is from plum tree wood, but the spool is from nectarine, and he went to the trouble of shaping the bob in a salty sort of way- a smooth old-fashioned pair of bilges leading down to the keel that will point towards our Earthly centre. If given the chance to dangle.

In doing that he turned a line on the lathe that is the symbol of the things I care about most mystically...he described intuitively a reflex curve. This curve is at the heart of the violin family of shapes, and it is presented in details taken from all sorts of angles. It is the reconciliation of opposites, the seemless transition from concave to convex, from exterior to interior, aggressive to receptive. From Yin to Yang, from hard to soft. This curve has the capacity to create great visual energy, and it describes a much more satisfying way to get from A to B than simply going forward. It describes my feeble attempts to go from learning to expression, and from assimilation to reconciliation, and from contemplation to growth.

It is also commonly expressed on beautiful hulls. The energy in the line occurs most forcibly when the point of change in the transition is not discernible.

Yes, I know, it is not normal to have such complex feelings about lines. But when have I ever claimed to be normal?

managing braised plastic

Sometimes a man learns from the most improbable things. The pic above is of Annie on display at our local community festival- an event normally about land-locked things, with an emphasis on local produce and skills. I was asked to display her by a desperate organiser, and I complied largely because I feel that I do so little for what is a wonderful country community with a real spirit.

Of course it rained most of the day, but there was no wind so Annie was never tempted to run away on her trailer. I was amazed at the interest shown in her, and it did add something unusual to a rural event I suppose.

The purpose of this story is to reveal some failures of my electric propulsion system, and to illustrate just how capable I am of making wrong assumptions. The sailing prior to this had led me to assume that I couldn't run the electric motor at full speed for long, and I assumed that was part of the nature of the beast- the cut-out would break the circuit if I got too enthusiastic, so I took that more as a consequence of my behaviour than as one of a system failure...but then the next time out we smelt that horrid smell of cooking plastic, and the speed controller failed, looking like a burnt sausage in the process.

I replaced the unit, but in doing so I realized that little thing that a clever person would have considered weeks ago- that in triple insulating the speed-controller under the deck, I had made it impossible for any moisture that might weedle its way into the switch via the shaft from the normally dry deck, to escape. That moisture just sat there braising the unit every time it was used. That rainy day at the local festival had been my un-doing. So hell-bent had I been to avoid the great briny from soaking my electro-bits, I had over-looked the more common (and obvious) hazards of precipitation.

I have since installed the little dear into a small box mounted on the motor hatch, with the knob protected from the weather. I hope that sorts it.

lines and shapes from a friend's workshop

Bryan is the finest craftsman I've met and I'm proud to call him a friend. He began as a pattern-maker in his youth and the precision learnt then has informed all his work since, but it has been tempered by a keen relationship with the natural world- on and off the water, and a complex modern spirituality born of art and anchored in humility. This is just a little taste of some of the textures of his inner sanctum- a place where nothing is ever wasted and everything holds a possibility.

the brain has to retain what lingers in the fingers

In the picture above, an old Italian mandolin has begun its little transition from forgotten, neglected migrant artefact, to a playable addition to the self-imposed nudges at the edges of my comfort zone. I bought it for me, and I will enjoy the restoration, but in truth there are other members of my family much more likely to bring it into song. I think that I'm probably too lazy to make the tunes linger in the fingers long enough to out-pace my declining memory cells....The rosette has been re-fitted, and a couple of major belly cracks have been sorted so far. It was made in 1916- a tragic year- and it came to me in a homemade serge bag. I suspect it is made from 'great coat' fabric from the Italian army. I sometimes wonder what it might have seen and heard.

Nobody will be surprised to learn that this (above) was the view that caused me to want this mandolin...

Same mill pond, different son. You can see we really struggled on Friday. We have had many days of very light breezes, and while they don't make for exhilarating sailing, they do make for some placid, beautiful moments.

millpond magic

millpond magic, originally uploaded by robert.ditterich.

Huge film with very complex plot and reams of dialogue

expanses and limits

Blessed with some benign and beautiful Autumnal weather, we have made good use of Corio Bay, it's space and its pleasant surrounds. There have been enough of the gusts to give me some grasp of the ability of this hull to get up and stir the soul, but gentle reminders of my limitations too. I've sailed one-up, two-up, and four-up (including a picnic of lovely things), and the boat has not behaved with any great difference on any occasion. It has a very adaptable and capable hull with enormous inherent stability. Because there is no cabin, the entire space is always available, so in some ways she really feels quite roomy even compared to our larger boat. That fine fellow stretching out in the photo above is over 6ft tall in the old measure, and while we sailed together he sat on every conceivable nook and cranny, and stood on a few as well, but we never lacked a place to stretch. And yet to launch this boat, or to tow her, is a whole margin easier than the 18 footer- and to rig her with that tabernacle is an absolute delight. To lift that swiveled main mast with one hand while the jib goes up consequently as an added bonus is a very real pleasure.

The light weather has also shown us some limitations in very gentle ways. The electric motor has enabled me to go out every week so far without even starting the outboard. No fuel, no flushing, no noise and much better marina handling. But in a lumpy swell with a bit of a headwind I was not at all surprised to find it lacking. It lacked pulling power of course (we all knew it would) but it also didn't like being run at full throttle for long periods- not because of battery capacity, but because the 60 amp cut-out switch trips to protect whatever it is that gets hot in that situation.

So, when we launch with an off-shore wind, or want to travel downwind from the marina, or when there might be a current or wind that will make for lumpy water I'll carry the outboard to make good old-fashioned velocity an option.

I also discovered the truth of one of Owen Sinclair's statements quoted in my book, concerning the situations where it becomes difficult to go to windward under mizzen and jib alone. In a very light breeze, having dropped the main early out of habit (because the marina is normally a lee shore) that 'last tack' would have been an amusing time-stretch had it not been for an appointment with a client that I needed to get back to the real world for... I did get there in time with a rapid ten minute de-rig. But it is really quite undignified to have to move that quickly at my age.

Duckworks have made very good sails for this boat. Their product deserves to be mentioned. So does their outboard bracket, even if the motor has just been hanging around waiting for its day in the sun. The bracket is just so easy to take off the boat.

And if there is ever a reader from Geelong in Victoria, I do heartily recommend Four Winds Marine. Roger is a delightful and very helpful man, and the ideal chandler to have when you need bits of kit.

I don't want to be seen to be pushing commercial interests on this blog, but I have a strong belief that we as consumers should look beyond cost in the spending of our money. I believe in investing in good people whenever possible. If you invest in people there is pleasure to be had in the relationship as well as the product and that has to be healthy.

pottering in

magic few sails in glorious April

It would be good to try to organise some thoughts about these first few sails of a yawl, and this one in particular. Whatever things I say here will be spoken like an inexperienced sailor, and my observations may seem simplistic to some, and should not be gospel to anyone.

I've taken a few opportunities to sail Annie alone, and the weather has been very kind to me- but my aim in doing this is to spend some time just trying to listen and feel, and see what Annie has to teach me before I go off with the distraction of crew and passengers to talk to. This has really paid dividends already because it is one thing to nut something out intellectually, but quite another to follow a line and give it a nudge either way to see how it all feels through the fingers and seat.

Take the issue of weather helm and mizzen tuning for example. On my first outing in Annie, in very light winds I was having an easy, lovely time, but when a gust came the tiller didn't do the things that it does to my fingers in a sloop. The boat didn't ask me to spill some wind or let the tiller slip a'lee, because in those light conditions I had the jib sheeted up like I would have in a sloop. The result was an incredibly light helm, or even a bit of lee helm. It seems to me that makes for very relaxed sailing, but if things go awry quickly it is helpful to have the helm wanting to round up the boat into the wind and decelerate all by itself, with no help from the skipper, whose mind might, at that moment, be on other things....On the other hand, an overly heavy helm is hard on everything, including the fingers.

On a sloop, the helm can be balanced or tuned by adjusting the stays for mast angle- back for heavier helm, forward for lighter (speaking generally), but you can't do these things without leaving the comfort of your seat....

Anyway, that first sail taught me a lot and I came to the second and third sails wanting to be more tuned into the needs of the mizzen and jib in balancing the rig for comfort as well as safety. To-day was great weather for finding some skills and practicing some drills. I had all morning available, and a wide expanse of Corio Bay to myself except for a few anchored ships and small fishing boats dotted around all the likely spots. Not another sail to be seen. Wind was steady and I took a very long beat from one side of the bay to the other with no other objective in mind than to feel what could be achieved by balancing mizzen against jib.

So, heading to windward I found a useful groove for the windspeed and just let out the jibsheet till I felt the mizzen pulling a little on the tiller. It's great to have the main and jib sheets coming from the same direction, but in these conditions I just cleated the main and see-sawed the boat from mizzen power (weather helm) to jib power (lee helm) without changing anything but the pull on the jib sheet. (The mizzen was sheeted fairly tight throughout the whole beat) For a small-brained simpleton like me this was fantastic- and it was like learning to actually feel the mizzen on my tiller fingers as it powered up relative to the jib. So finding the groove when the boat was in balance soon became more automatic, but still fluid as the wind raised and fell away. If I let the jib go out too far it told me by flapping, so the ears were learning just like the fingers....maybe the brain will catch up soon.

Second time around the bay the wind picked up on a beat and the hull came to life but I felt confident enough now to hold the course and let the wind do its best with me without giving any sheet away. It suddenly felt very grown up. Not content with that I sat out with the tiller extension and let her rip, having the most exhilarating solo sail I've ever had. The boat repaid my trust and gave me some speed, and I have to say, the boat feels like a different animal altogether from above the coaming with me looking down the bowsprit from an exulted height. It seems bigger, and very resolute.

One thing I'm really pleased with in the laying out of my fittings is the angle and positioning of the sheet cleats. I think for inexperienced sailors, in particular, it is incredibly important to have them carefully angled so that they are easily engaged, but more so in disengaging them - they need to be angled so that even just pulling the line will release them. First set of my jib cleats was nearly right, but was just a tad hard to cleat off without reaching forward and pulling down. I angled these up a little higher and now it is easy. Maybe stating the bleeding obvious, but a couple of degrees of orientation might save a lot of embarrassment some day.

Oh, and the little uneventful clip up there is from the second sail. To-day I was having too much fun even to answer the phone let alone film anything. Sorry....

the buzz and the box

This is to detail the installation of the electric drive after a very satisfactory first trial. The pic above shows the battery box, which is simply held captive by slotting over the keelson, and held fast when the lid is slid over the box and the catches engaged. The grey plug is an 'Anderson plug' and is an easy way to disconnect the battery. Behind that is a black plug (with waterproof cap) into which the battery charger is plugged. In our case, that battery charger is powered by homegrown solar electricity from our ten year old household power plant. There are various additions and refinements possible here, but I'm keen to keep things as simple as possible.

Incidentally, the wooden thing there is the boomkin in repose after its first outing.
This complicated pic shows the control for the motor. When the knob faces forward the system is off. Turning it to the right gives a range of forward speeds, and turning to the left makes you go backwards. This is so much more fun than an outboard, and so incredibly easy to control.

What this system won't do is completely replace an outboard because battery range will always be a limiting factor without considerable weight and expense. But if you often launch from a marina, or simply want to explore a non-sailable stretch of creek or river, then this will be easier, quieter and much more fun than a stinky thing.

Now a small confession. The system as shown does not use the electronic components discussed in the previous post called 'power resistor versus mamba max'- it uses the resistor supplied with the motor, under that knob. The reasons are that I was quite concerned about the small scale electronic wires and connections in a wet, corrosive and hostile environment (managed by an incompetent with big hands and less than perfect eyesight). The consequences are that I won't get the efficiency that I had hoped for, but that simply translates into running time, and if that becomes an issue I can simply carry a second battery.

The major surprise in using this system was the positivity felt in controlling the boat. Because you don't need to 'start' the motor, or reach back to change from forward to reverse, and because the drive is in front of the rudder (and not going to cut great chunks out of it) the rudder is very effective under power; I can place the boat accurately and confidently. I've never felt that before with an outboard. I also felt more confident in approaching the marina because I knew that reverse was so easy to go to from the forward position.

As I expected, the motor compartment carries about 20mm of water, but this is easily drained, and it just requires that the motor wires are well (triple in my case) insulated. The waterline will be a little lower when the outboard isn't pulling down the stern too- particularly since mine is overpowered and weighted at 5hp.

stop curling your sun-drenched toes buddy- I've got wings

This tiny clip is probably best watched in full screen mode, but don't hold your breath for a plot. It merely represents a moment of surprise and pleasure, when the little electric pod did everything I had hoped for it, but with even less fuss than I had expected.

At this point we had already discovered that the boat would float. Always a good start. More than that, the centre-board pin was not leaking. More good news. But all of this is to get well ahead of myself. Not unusual.

I was standing outside my workshop an hour before this with a gusty, enthusiastic northerly busily rearranging what is left of my hair. I'm thinking; 'I'm going to test the results of a year of work in this?' Plan A was just to see if she floats, with an extension plan based around seeing how much I had stuffed up the installation of the electric pod. My lack of confidence was to be dealt with by the presence of a petrol outboard, to save face and give an impression of someone who knows what he is doing if the pod fell off, or fizzed excessively, or failed to move the boat against the wind or current, or jellyfish or some other obstacle sent by the powers that conspire to keep my ego in check.

They all failed. Everything worked.

Which meant that getting on with sailing would have to be the next challenge.

By the time we launched the wind had magically fallen away to a lazy blow, the sun was out and she had been rigged easily within 20 minutes- and I was being slow, precise and careful, it being her first time and all...(without the outboard and with some practice this figure will no doubt improve, especially if I feel like moving a bit more quickly).

I decided that given the morning's anxiety about gusts, I'd start with motor and lazy mizzen, progressing to jib and mizzen if all went well, but the idea of raising the main was not given much consideration until after about ten minutes of relaxed sailing in a gentle breeze, up went the main from the comfort of the cockpit, and without leaving my seat. Such luxury.

I was absolutely gob-smacked (after the luck of having such success with the pod) to find that all systems worked, and despite my own short-comings as a sailor, Annie was having a lovely time anyway.

She was a delight. Tacked easily despite me, light on the helm, lots of nice places to stretch out a naked foot and wiggle the toes in sunlit sheer delight that I was alive and THE DAMN THING WORKED. Arm over the coaming, breeze in my face. Jib furler easy and very helpful, main sail pulling us along, despite the pod, even in a very light breeze.

One or two gusts came out of nowhere, and there I was with two sheets in one hand, my son on the phone in the other, and the mizzen seeming to just let me do my own thing without any great demands on my attention, when all of a sudden, I looked up to the main that seemed suddenly very big and quite capable of something very powerful, and Annie said 'stop curling your toes in the sun buddy, there's plenty about me to see yet. I've got wings and I've got lungs and if you play your cards right we'll have some fun....one day'.

Julia and I had a really lovely, lazy sail, and then I had a blissful potter on my own. Love it.

Thanks for the design Mr. Welsford.

why is perfect soup so scary?

OK, we had Julia's pea and ham soup for lunch and it was perfect. So what is the problem? Well we had a perfect cauliflower soup last week, and last night we shared a magnificent seafood lasagne (by Julia) and a beautiful oven roasted sea salmon (by our dear friends Rob and Sally), and I'm trying to get a boat ready for launch. I suppose I should point out that these meals are hearty and warming- the sort of cold-weather fare that occurs when the weather is cold and the hearth beckons...hardly the sort of environment that says 'let's go outside and sail a new boat'...

The techno-bits have progressed to the extent that I just have to connect the battery box to the wires that now weave their way torturously through the seat box enclosures. The battery will sit directly in front of the centre-board case- a nice place for a bit of useful ballast, but I'm far from confident about my work with wires and connectors and small shiny boxes that do electronic stuff that I don't have a clue about...I'm way out of my comfort zone here and it has been a real struggle to keep motivated in the battery motor powering bit of this build. I would be so much happier with wooden wires and plywood electronics. But you never make progress if you stay entirely comfortable, and in a couple of weeks my apprehension will look puerile (with luck), or justified, maybe....

I told Joel that I would post something about the rigging, so will begin this here. Setting up the mast involves drilling nasty holes for the hounds, but like a lot of Navigator builders, I put them all in the locations specified in the plans, but then found that the jib block was too low to accommodate the extra length involved in the furling gear. So Joel, be warned- the jib halyard will be higher than specified, and to deal with this it may be worth having longer stays which can share the bolt hole for the jib hounds. My set-up is unusual too, because I've made a tabernacle for mast mounting, but apart from that, the Duckworks sails arrived in exactly the right shape and size, and set very well indeed on first raising them.

The long batten has been the subject of a bit of discussion, and many have chosen to use shorter ones- and I am open to correction should I experience problems sailing, but they set really beautifully, and I don't have a problem wrapping them all up for transport, so I'm entrely happy so far. The long batten makes the sail take shape even without wind, and the gaff set-up allows easy adjustment, without the common creases that the short batten fraternity seem to have. The gaff is a joy so far, and having the halyards set back to the cockpit means that lowering the sail can be a somewhat relaxed affair, taking the time to keep it all relatively neat. The weight of the yard makes lowering easy.

I've followed Kevin's excellent example in setting up the topping lift as lazy-jacks as well. I experimented with several positions to run the line under the boom, to find the best place to gather the most sail, and found a spot back near the reefing cleat. I resisted (so far) the temptation to complicate the one-line system by adding a second sail-catching line, because this system works well with great simplicity.

I'm thrilled with the tabernace. It is just so easy to lift and lower the mast without disconnecting the sail at all- even the lacing can remain exactly as it was when set. The only line that changes is the jib halyard. Easy and fast. The mizzen would be this fast too if it wasn't for its three battens, but to speed their removal I've drilled their ends to accommodate a small line that peeks out of the pocket. The yard is interesting. I began with a bridle for the peak halyard to slide along, but found a simple static shackle worked just as well, but was easier to handle when lowering. Maybe things will be different when lowering or setting a reefed main, but for the moment, I'll stick to the simplest possible solution.

As to the gaff jaws, they seem to work well. Owen Sinclair sent me a pic of his jamb cleat to secure the parrell line (and save cold wet fingers from untying knots). It would be good to do something along those lines...one day.

The second pic above was included to show the bulge from the long batten when the sail is lowered. Quite manageable.

More rigging details are shown on my Flickr set. The link is in the right side-bar, below.

On another matter, there are a couple of new ways to read this blog. The first is your ability, if you are silly enough to read this stuff, to get notified of new posts by email, and the second is to view the blog as a selectable mosaic. The link is in the right side-bar, near the top, and is worth trying if you like to browse.

glad rags for Annie

Staying clean longer

Yes, I know that is a nasty combination of corrosion-producing metals, and I'm a very naughty boy. One day I'll sort it...

Those of you who are possessed of an indulgent imagination will see from this pic that Navigators look like ice-cream cones when viewed from a particular angle. Very tempting just to pick it up by the bowsprit and give it a lick, but my wrists aren't as strong as they once were.

This week-end I will have the mizzen up I hope, and maybe get around (finally) to designing a suitable mounting and securing arrangement for the electric pod (which now has a battery [which will need its own watertight box etc] by the way, and an impressive coil of cable, and a daunting bag of bits and techno-pieces)

But I have to say that there are fewer daunting bags of things to sort and attach, and I seem to be able to stay clean for longer when I'm in the shed, so that has to be a good thing doesn't it?