Mostly trying to standardize the way tests sleep for arbitrary amounts
of time to make it easier to tell at which particular point the
unit test actually may need the timeout interval increased (or else
debugged further).
number of fields required.
Addresses BIT-1683
I do not think this quite fixes the underlying issue of BIT-1683 - it
should not be possible to get to this state in normal operations.
Also fixes a small memory leak for disabled writers.
