Determined to finish my project work, I started early and by the time the chandleries were open I was ready to go shopping for the missing wire and the 2-3 bolts and screws which I needed to replace as they’d either fallen overboard or headed into the abyssal depths of the bilge. The little chandlery and the Falmouth marina docks is my last choice, as it is run by a lady who is one of the most impolite shopkeepers I’ve ever encountered, so my first stop was the chandlery at the Catamaran Co. docks, where I got electrical tape, my screw/bolts but they had no wire, and the local shop that would carry 2-strand turned out to be closed on Saturdays. Then I dinghied over to a little chandlery over a gas station, but they were closed so my final stop was at the store I least wanted to go to. As I entered, the proprietress was telling someone “How should I know, I’m not a mind-reader! What do you want?” and when it was my turn at the queue I considered myself fortunate to merely get a “No.” as a response.
Back aboard I used some small-diameter cable to complete the project, at least until I could get some proper-sized cabling elsewhere. When I tested the connections and settings in the dinghy garage everything worked, but once I completed the project it no longer did, and it took a bit of testing to discover that a crimped connection on the small wire had torn the delicate strands and broken the connection, although it looked perfectly in order; the broken spot was hidden beneath the heat-shrink tubing I’d used. I got that sorted out and worked on the LED strips to make them a bit more weather- and corrosion-resistant and by the time all of that had been done it was in the late afternoon already.
Then began the hard work of cleaning up, which I only partially finished before giving a virtual “I give up” gesture and postponing those chores to the next morning. I went ashore to have some interesting conversations with some sailors at Happy Hour and after checking out the menus of the restaurants between Falmouth and English harbours I opted to get another tasty pizza, this time a 3-cheese vegetarian one and subsequently returned to the boat in order to bask in the dimmable glory of my new LED cockpit lighting.
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