{ Video } Living on a TINY 28ft Salvaged Sailboat for 2 Years + BOAT TOUR

In this video we meet Maya and Aladino, a couple of sailors who are living full-time on their tiny 28-foot sailboat. They travel slowly with minimal belongings, and they keep their expenses low by doing most boat repairs themselves, and by living as cheaply as possible.

Video Script:: 

[Applause] [Music] not only is this lifestyle that I want to live I just love sailing there is a certain magic to it that I cannot describe just knowing that the main propulsion is the wind and with that we could get around the world is mind-blowing [Music] when I saw this boat for the first time I fell in love with it it was a complete project at the time since it had fallen from the crane and yeah it got smashed pretty bad actually everybody suggested to run away but I'm glad now that I stuck through the restoration took me four years but always in my spare time we live very simple it's a very small home but not only is the lifestyle rewarding but so is the boat itself over the past two years magic carpet has taken us all around the Mediterranean we're now actually on our way from the Mediterranean all the way up to the North Sea through Europe's inland waterways to go and explore some of northern Europe so of course in order to do all this traveling we need to have a self-sufficient little home that will take care of us on the water even if we are offshore for a while crossing between islands or crossing over to new countries welcome to the inside of magic carpet so this is where I spend a lot of my time when we're not sailing or swimming or exploring that I'm here usually editing videos or making food or whatever else so over here we have our little galley it's very simple we just have a two burner stove we don't have an oven or anything and our stove runs on alcohol which is really useful because it's usually pretty easy to buy in most grocery stores especially here in Europe everything has to have like multiple purposes on a boat nothing can be wasted so over here we have sort of our kitchen counter where I prepare all our food but it also doubles as our navigation station we've got our instrument controls over here and then underneath here we also have storage for charts and paperwork and whatever else that we need over here we have our fresh food stores so it's nice because everything is very easily on display you can see what needs to be eaten right away because when you're out sailing you usually you have to stock up for quite a while at a time and then you'll be offshore for a little while so you've got to buy in bulk and make sure your veggies keep fresh down here we have some storage for pots and pans pretty typical but when you're on a boat you really have to learn to pare down to the essentials and really define what essential is for you because there's very limited space and so we have one frying pan we have two sauce pans and that's pretty much all we have for cookware but it's more than enough because we have a two burner stove and so we can't fit much more than that anyway we also have a fridge which is quite a luxury on a small boat like ours so it's just in there and it lifts up from the top this is actually pretty common and a lot of boats because when you open a fridge sideways like a normal house fridge everything could fall out when you're saline so that's one reason the second reason is actually for energy efficiency so when you open the fridge from the top because cold air sinks it's not all going to escape so now moving into the main saloon as it's called on a boat like I said everything on a boat has to serve more than one purpose and so both of these benches convert into beds so and and also have storage so this one folds down like so and then it folds all the way down and we can put mattresses here and have sort of a a small a small double or a comfortable single bed and then there's also storage behind here when it's not being used as it as a bed now when you live on a boat one of the primary considerations in boat design is to make everything function even when the boat is moving sometimes you can get into really big waves and when that happens you need to be safe in your boat and not be thrown against the wall so wherever you go there always has to be something to grab onto so here we have these grab rails up on the roof the deck head and all of these cupboards they all have latches so that they don't fly open if we get into some big waves also the stove is gimballed so it moves like this with the waves and this actually works really really well we've been able to cook some food and some pretty gnarly conditions and it hasn't fallen off the stove if it gets really bad we also have them kind of pot holders that we can install here I love our table on magic carpet it's always here when we need it when we need it to be bigger so if we're having a dinner party we can all sit around and it also slides out you have to loosen it on there but it kind of slides to the middle but then when we let it kind of fold down then we have all this space to walk for it and it doesn't ever get in our way this is where any water might collect this called the bilge typically you want your village to be as dry as possible so we do keep vegetables and fruits potatoes whatever no there's sometimes cuz it's nice and cool especially on a boat this size you really have to get creative with your storage so under the floorboards wherever it can fit you store what you need this is very sleep and it's very cozy it's typical of many boats in that it's v-shaped and it's called the rebirth because up here obviously is the bow that's where it narrows but it works pretty well our feet are kind of close but we've got lots of room up here I actually find it really comfortable and then we have our closet here we don't have a lot of room in here so we've got this really one small closet for both myself and a ladino and then in here is the head or the bathroom yeah it's pretty simple it's just got a toilet and the sink that's all there is to that this right here is the cockpit this is where we spend a lot of our time when we are steering the boat or even just to hang out and read and eat dinner or whatever is going on it's a really nice space it's got teak decane a ladino just recently redid the cocking here to make sure that it's all sealed would generally requires a lot more maintenance than fiberglass which most modern boats are built out of but the benefit obviously is that you have this really beautiful space around you underneath my feet is the engine and the propeller shaft which is what we're using predominantly now that we're going through the rivers and canals on our way through Europe but obviously when we get to salt water again we'll put our mast back up and then the sails will become our primary form of propulsion [Music] so we do have an auxilary diesel engine on our case it's three cylinder Yanmar with 20 horsepower with the engine running we can also charge our batteries being a sailboat we still try not to use our engine as much as possible and so that's where our solar panel comes in we have a really nice 130 watt solar panel it's a small flexible one that goes on top of our Bimini and doesn't get in our way but it does a nice job at providing the basic electrical needs for us on our boat so we also have a toilet and mostly on a boat how that works is coming combined with the holding tank and you have different pump out stations our boat has integral fiberglass in water tanks which means our water tanks are made out of fiberglass and they are fibreglass into the hole and we have a hundred liters on the boat we don't have a water maker because that again makes the system more complicated it uses electricity and it's a small boat so what we've done though to improve the situation of having less water is we added two filters and that makes all the water that we carry drinkable so dishes and everything else we usually do in saltwater so having a hundred liters only to drink the water actually last for quite a while don't get us wrong we would love a water maker but for now we don't need one and we've gone by just fine [Music] it's funny that I didn't even think this option could exist for me otherwise I think I might have chosen it earlier I thought you have to start at a very young age to become a sailor and also I thought a lot of wealth would be included in that matter to make it happen but as I was traveling I met another type of sailors which live on the boats instead of additionally owning a boat and that makes things quite different and I just started working on making that happen and I did an apprenticeship as a boat builder so I first became intrigued by sailing when I was about 13 I started learning how to sail and I would go down and walk around the docks and so one day I was in 2nd year University I was walking around the dock and this one boat caught my eye was this really really gorgeous little boat but obviously in some disrepair I ended up emailing the owners of that boat I found their email address I sent them a nice message essentially asking them what their plans were for it and five days later they sent me an email back they said she's yours and you can have her for $1 it's a wild story but that's how I got my first boat and that completely changed my life I'm obviously so happy it happened because it led to everything else down the road I went to Europe and I worked on a board a tallship and that's eventually where I met Alan you know he was sailing around the Mediterranean on his little boat so one thing that I actually find challenging is sometimes it can all get a little bit too much because you try to be self-sufficient and therefore you have to fulfill many missions only being the two of you that is navigation of the boat but also the cooking and holding the watch and checking the weather and you repair your sails you're your own mechanic you have to tend to the boat some of the main challenges about living on a boat for me mostly are about being away from my friends and family I'm Canadian and right now I'm living over here in Europe so all my friends and family are obviously half the world away from me and that is really difficult but I mean thankfully the Internet is here and I'm able to go home usually about once a year so a question that our friends and family often ask is how we make this lifestyle work financially you need to be able to feed yourself and you need to be able to afford repairs when they come up but you don't even really need to be able to afford rent because often you are anchoring or you're out sailing and you're not paying harbor fees and obviously we don't own a car we don't own an apartment we don't have a mortgage all of those expenses are knocked off the table that said obviously we still have to earn money and so the first season of saline we actually just sailed for the summer and then we went back to work for the winter saved up some money went sailing again and during that whole time we also worked on building up our YouTube channel and so now that's actually our main source of income I make videos about all of our adventures as we sail and all the things that we experience the challenges that get thrown at us along the way and that's now our main source of income but it's also sort of our main activity on the boat and I think that's a really important thing about boat life or any kind of alternative life style really is after a while it's not enough to just simply live apart from society and do things differently you always need a purpose I think every human needs a purpose and I think I found mine in the ability to share my story and inspire others who want to live this lifestyle and [Music] we want to sail around the world as slowly as possible I really see this stretching far into our future and we're in no rapture we want to experience every little bay and every little town along the way we want to get to know people and it doesn't really matter how long that takes [Music] subscribe to exploring alternatives and check out our playlists for more stories like this you can also follow Aladin oh and Maya on YouTube at sailing magic-carpet thanks for watching