I've been looking through cruising books looking for ideas, tips and tricks and handy hints on living aboard and storage. I've dutifully gone through all the classics including Beth Leonard, the Pardeys, Nigel Calder, Jim Howard and many more.

One thing has struck me about these books on cruising is that the writers all describe the item that one needs for cruising as the final product. By that I mean whole chapters will be devoted to the perfect plumbing system, the perfect storage system for the galley, the perfect anchoring system and so on.
In my experience the reality of designing a system or finding a solution to a problem is much less polished than that. Our method of designing a solution is to mock something up to see if the basic concept will even work. Then we make a trial design to check for any major flaws. Then we have a first pass at designing the system. Then we stop and assess any unforeseen issues. Finally we use the system for a few months and see how we like it. If it doesn't quite work, we take another crack at the design process. And so it goes.

The gap between the smoothly edited chapters on the perfect must-have galley plumbing system and the grubby reality of figuring out a solution that works for us is sometimes enormously large and it takes meeting another cruiser on the dock and hearing about their problem solving to remind me that everyone goes through the trial and error process, no matter how polished the re-telling of the process becomes.