A quick thought on needful things...

The big problem on my boat is guitar stowage...

I mention this because everybody I know has a stowage problem with some non-marine stuff whether it be guitars, books, art supplies, stuffed animals, or other non-boat specific stuff that you really need around to make your boat...  

Home

Of course, a lot of folks will tell you to just leave stuff "at home" or put it into storage but for us full-time-living-on-boat-folks, leaving stuff at "home" is simply not going to happen (I don't think I need to explain the logic of that statement) and, as for leaving stuff in storage what good is that?

I'm pretty sure that I've gone on record a time or few about how I hate the word "camping" when used in conversations regarding boat design, living aboard, and suchlike. In my personal view of things, the difference between camping and living aboard is not the number of heads, headroom, or having a genset big enough to light a small city but the simple equation of having the needful stuff you enjoy around you... Needless to say, I'll take a couple of surfboards, a big well-stocked bookshelf, and a quiver of guitars over full standing headroom any day.

That said, I have to admit that I don't always make it real easy on myself as my chosen axes are both large and oddly shaped (Firebirds and Thunderbirds) and my life would be a whole lot easier if I were to lose the birds and start using what seems like a very sensible and nearly perfect (in a stowage sense) guitar like the old La Baye 2X4 (which is really just a Firebird without the "wings")...

...which takes up about a third of the stowage space as my Firebird. For those interested Eastwood gutars is currently building a small batch and I'd be lying to say I was not seriously tempted (not that I'd ever consider giving up my Firebird or Thunderbird).

So if anybody has any cunning plans for stowing a half dozen or so guitars I'd love to see them... Comments, as they say, are open.