How many guitars can you fit on a 27-foot sailboat...

 Sadly, it's a simple answer...

Not enough.

Which, for me at least, is the big downside of every 27-foot boat you're likely to come across in that they just don't have a lot of space or weight carrying ability.

Which is not to say you can't live and cruise on a 27-foot sailboat but with a finite space you'll have to make some serious life changes to make it work.

Now while I use guitars as an example, the needful stuff is more about things like water, provisions, and the various tools one needs to live your life in a way that does not equate with a prison sentence.

Where most people get it wrong with small boats is assuming they can just keep adding stuff with no regard to the fact that boats have a waterline for a very good reason. Adding a couple of inches to the waterline every couple of years is just stupid as well as being plain bad seamanship.

If your boat is designed to draw five feet then that's what it should draw. 

When I think about it, you could really do a lot worse in choosing that as a mantra.

Anyway, living and cruising on a small boat successfully requires one to adapt to living within the constraints of your chosen vessel and embracing its finite nature. Which, considering we live in a hardcore consumerist society, is never going to be an easy task. Since the answer to all problems is to "buy more stuff" you're not likely to get much help in the "How do I do what's needed using less" zone.

That being the case, you'll have to get creative and realize that most of the time you'll be swimming upstream without a whole lot of atta-boys from fellow cruisers. Which I'll add is actually a bonus as it gets rid of the whole "Keeping up with the Jones's" element in the equation and makes a lot of decisions easier.

Next up is we'll take a look on how to sort out that finite space in a way that makes some sense...