Maddie and I live in our 45 foot sailboat year round. We live here with our two pets, Morty (our corgi) and Sammy (our parrot), through the heat of summer and chills of the winter. We spend most of our indoor time right here on this bench.
It is amazing how versatile such a small space can be! The cabinets behind us are storage for booze, diesel for the stove in the lower right corner of the picture, plates, pots and pans, and electrical connectors. Behind our backs is more storage, where we keep towels, electric heaters, ropes, paints, plumbing connectors, and paper towels. Under our seats are two of the eight water tanks in the boat, along with the water pump. The table itself also has space for storing the bedding supplies, as well as games.
We eat, work, and relax at this small table. Maddie opens the leaves to do her paintings and I use the table for all the other projects I have done in the boat. I even built the rigging for the whole sailboat sitting right there! Add some more pillows to the bench and we can stretch out to watch a movie on our laptop computer.
The boat is only 45 feet long, and yet we spend most of our indoor time on that bench in a room that is 7 feet long by 8 feet wide. When you have a well laid out common area, it can take the place of multiple specilaized rooms that would require much more space. I originally wanted to live in a tiny house, and then discovered sailboat living (which offers unlimited mobility to the tiny house). I think tiny houses and boat designers should work together to maximize the amount of living with minimal space!
I have learned to organize my things more efficiently thanks to information about tiny house living. I feel that tiny house design could benefit by taking cues from sailboat interior layouts.
