ABOUT

Before boats, it was bikes. While still in high school, Aladino did several long distance bike trips around Europe. When he graduated, he decided to fly himself and his bike over to Seattle WA, and begin a long journey down the coast. The goal was to get all the way to the southern tip of South America, but he only made it as far as Mexico. There, he met an older sailor and boatbuilder who changed his life. Miguel was an American man who took Aladino under his wing and taught him how to sail. 

Growing up in Switzerland, Aladino only ever saw sailing as something reserved for the rich. But with Miguel’s guidance, Aladino saw a different side of sailing: the liveaboard lifestyle, full time travellers, moving around the world with the wind. He was enthralled. From that point on, he vowed to do whatever possible to make sailing his life. 

When he returned to Switzerland, he enrolled as an apprentice boatbuilder. In the evenings, he began working on his own project: Magic Carpet I. 

Maya’s sailing roots run deep. Her parents met on a tallship during a voyage around the world. But Maya’s own sailing aspirations started in highschool, when she learned to sail in local BC waters on board a small fibreglass keel boat. In second year university, Maya’s life changed when she was gifted a gorgeous wooden sailboat for $1 under some very strange circumstances… that story is told here. With her own boat to care for and sail, Maya’s love of sailing grew. 

Now, Maya combines sailing with her love of music, art, and filmmaking to produce the Sailing Magic Carpet films. A violinist since age 3, you may catch Maya (and her oddly identical sisters!) playing some live music for the films. 

We met in the summer of 2017. I (Maya) graduated from a 4 year university degree in Canada, and accepted a job on a tall ship in the Mediterranean.

Aladino was also sailing around the Mediterranean that summer, on a little fibreglass boat with a friend.

When I met Aladino, I could tell he was very special. Our boats were sailing to different places, but we kept in touch, and when the summer season ended I decided to go visit him in Switzerland.

On my first day in Switzerland, I texted my best friend back home in Canada: “I think I just met my future husband.”

I was correct!

Together, Aladino and I finished the refit on Magic Carpet I and set sail for the Mediterranean in 2018. We began filming a few episodes just for fun. Neither of us had any idea how to make a film, but I enjoyed storytelling so I just stitched together a few iPhone shots over top of a written narration. Surprisingly, people began to watch them. We started learning more about filmmaking and invested in better equipment, and today we’re absolutely over the moon to say that the Sailing Magic Carpet channel is our full time job. 

Magic Carpet is a 28ft Vindo 32. The “32” in the name refers to sail area, not length.

In 2013, before she was ours, tragedy struck. In an accident at a boatyard, she ended up falling 20ft from a crane onto concrete below.

She was a total write-off. Her keel was crushed, the entire transom blew out, the rudder was mangled, and there was a giant crack on her port side.

That’s when Aladino found her. He saved her from the junkyard and gave her new life. He spent four years expertly rebuilding the hull and turning her into his masterpiece.

During the last year of the restoration, Aladino and Maya met, and Maya helped with the last pieces of the restoration.

We launched Magic Carpet in June of 2018 –– just a few days after we got married! We took her through the French canals on a two week journey to the Mediterranean. After two Mediterranean seasons, we decided to go North, and underwent a massive journey through Europe via canals and rivers. We finally stepped the mast again in The Netherlands, and enjoyed a season sailing there. 

Magic Carpet I has been an incredible first boat together, and her adventures aren’t done yet! There’s still more European exploration to come.

Magic Carpet II is a Cape George 36, a bluewater boat that can circle the globe with ease. We bought her sight unseen from halfway around the world during the first wave of Covid… it was a bit nuts. That whole story is here. She’s in need of a lot of work, but when done she will be our around the world vessel. 

Current and Future Plans

We want to sail around the world as slowly as possible.

We love sailing, and we don’t want to rush around the world to get it over with.

We plan to make videos documenting every aspect of our journey, from sailing the oceans, to journeying down rivers, to long days in the boatyard.

Our videos focus on sailing, music, storytelling, and serenity. We hope our videos inspire you to pursue your own dreams.

We didn’t set out intending to be filmmakers.

We both just loved sailing, and I (Maya) loved art in general. I enjoyed writing little accounts of our journey, taking photos, and playing music. Video seemed like a convenient way to combine all of those interests — but video itself was not really a big interest of mine.

As is plainly obvious from our first few episodes, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I remember when I made the first episode, I googled “how to make a great video.” One thing people talked about was colour grading. I didn’t really know what that was or how to do it, but I gathered it meant editing the colour of the film. So, I decided to mess with the colours of my shaky iPhone footage… and that’s why the whole first episode looks strangely purple.

Over time, our audience inexplicably grew. Initially, people were simply attracted to the storytelling. I enjoyed writing narrations about our travels — the films were almost more of a narrated travelogue with a slideshow than an actual film. But slowly, I started paying more attention to the actual video side of things. I learned how to properly use a camera, how to edit interesting scenes together, and how to tell a story through film.

Now, I’m comfortable calling myself a filmmaker. Every week for four years, I’ve condensed our adventures and misadventures into short stories to share with our ever growing audience.

At their core, the films today maintain that same dedication to story and the written word. But now the footage is slightly less shaky, the audio slightly less wind blown, and Aladino and I have gotten used to actually speaking in front of the camera as well.