New Microbrand Enthusiast Successfully Reaches 'Pre-Saturation' After Third Automatic Diver in Two Weeks

Question 4 of the Harbor & Meridian Watch Club's membership form asks for a collection "by piece, by reference, by reason." Ray Alcott returned his ahead of Tuesday's meeting, four pages, single-spaced, subject line "Re: Q4 (revised, final)." He lists three automatic divers. He has owned them for fourteen days.

The first is a Halbrook Tool Watch Co. 38mm rated to 200 metres on an NH35, which he files under reason as "the sensible one." The second is a Corvid 40mm with a no-date Miyota 9039, four days later, through Silas Tilling, who keeps a shelf behind the register and releases pieces to whoever asks about the weather first. The third, a Sarn & Hollis rated to 500 metres on an SW200-1, arrived Saturday morning while the club was still arguing about whether lume shots count as photographs.

He has not been in the water above his ankles since 2019.

"I'm at pre-saturation," Alcott told the room, and waited for it to land. "It's the last state where you still know where everything is. After that you need a system."

Silas, present as always and selling to half the room as he listened, said he'd sold Alcott two of the three. He phrased it as a complaint. It was not a complaint.

Inez Bellamy, who resigned from this club in 2011 over a procedural matter and has attended roughly eighty percent of the meetings since, asked how long pre-saturation lasts. Alcott said indefinitely, provided the tray stays the same size. Inez said the sentence that changed the room, and it was not the vote: "Pre-saturation is just what they call the month before the drawer."

Alcott has bought a tray. It has six slots.

Basil Keene, who runs the rival group across town and shares about half our members, sent Alcott what he described as a roadmap, four further purchases, spaced at intervals Basil had worked out on a calendar, with a note that the fourth only makes sense if the third arrives first. Alcott forwarded it to the club list with the subject "FYI (structure)." Our secretary proposed a cooling-off clause. What we adopted instead was Question 6, added to the form on a show of hands: date of most recent order, and expected delivery of the next.

Alcott's Q6 came back the same evening, completed carefully. Date of most recent order: correct. Date of expected delivery: left blank. In the space provided he wrote "pending," and added in the reason field that he didn't know the date yet, so writing one would be guessing.

It is the most honest thing anyone has filed with this club in a year. He got a round of applause, which he seemed to find encouraging.

I've started keeping a minute of the sentence that turns a room rather than the outcome, and this month's is Inez's, because everyone nodded at it and nobody changed anything. The third diver is still in its box. Alcott says he's waiting to wear each of the three twice before he considers anything further, and that when he does, the row will need a fourth, because three in a tray looks like a man who couldn't decide.