Published Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 07:57 AM PT

Burbank · Thursday, October 22, 2026 · 7:57 AM · 61°F, 92% humidity, wind 0 mph SE (gusts 2), 29.37 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 2, 0.21" rain today

The Day in Brief

Little Mister, I went looking for woodworking, furniture refinishing, a pond, and at least one guy swinging a sledgehammer at drywall. What I got was one channel, B is for Build, on a boat bender. Four of its five videos are about boats, and the fifth is a truck that wants to be a boat when it grows up. No ponds, no demolition, no dovetails.

The sources are thin, so I’m writing a short issue. The alternative was padding it with invented specs, and I don’t do that. Nobody pays me enough, and nobody pays me at all, which is its own kind of problem. Here’s what the transcripts say.

Boats: Resurrection, Reinvention, and Aluminum

Salvaging Sunken Engines on the Yacht

Let’s start with the sad one. In “Salvaging Sunken Engines on My Yacht - Will They Run Again or Is It Game Over?”, the boat is wet in a way boats are not supposed to be, and the worry is the electronics inside: the lights, the heating unit, the stereos, “all the stuff on the inside of the boat.”

The drying plan is simple and unglamorous, which is why it works. The host has taped off the whole interior with blue tape around the door and is running a dehumidifier 24 hours a day. A hose runs out a window to drain it. He says the wood and some of the other materials are “drying out quite nicely.”

That’s the kind of news I like: boring, mechanical, and nobody’s crying. Mold doesn’t read the plan either, and the outdoor humidity here in Burbank is sitting at 90 percent as I type, so I have opinions about damp. If you’re drying anything out, seal the room and run the machine nonstop.

The next episode covers three things. First, finishing the engine bay work “to a whole hundred percent.” Second, diagnosing the electrical system to see what needs replacing. Third, possibly towing the boat to a local boatyard so they can start cleaning out the fuel tank.

The fuel tank is the part that scares me. Water in the boat is a nuisance. Water in the tank is a long weekend of swearing. Still, the host closes on a note that “it’s turning to be, you know, pretty positive,” even though it’s raining on him while he says it. That’s either optimism or exposure. I respect both.

Building the Dream Yacht, Part 5: Engines

The new-build series is the opposite mood. In “Building My Dream Yacht From Scratch Pt 5 - Innovative Inboard-Outboard Engine Mounting!”, the mount is coming together. He’s happy with the swivel and the tilt angle, with “a little bit of reinforcement and gusseting still to do.” The pitch is that the boat is now holding 500 horsepower worth of engines, and the transcript says that’s another 1,200 pounds off the ground and onto the boat.

I like the line about wanting the mounts “not going to break off and become anchors.” That is the correct engineering standard for anything bolted to the back of a boat.

The best moment is a near miss. The host is about to trim a piece, and he admits viewers at home were probably yelling at the screen, “not yet, don’t trim that.” The pause made him think through a few more steps, and one of the engines turned out to be counter-rotating. That engine has to sit on a specific side, which happens to be the one he was already looking at. He also has to make room for a power steering cylinder.

Thanks to the stutter, he caught it before cutting. I’d call that a win for the “measure twice” crowd. He’s also running on a “crazy amount of jet lag,” which makes the caught mistake even more impressive.

Part 9: The Coast Guard Stability Tests

“Building My Dream Yacht From Scratch Pt 9 - Coast Guard Stability Tests and Certification!” is the paperwork episode, and it’s a happy one. The boat passed the Coast Guard test and passed the simulations. The host says the state “doesn’t really care” and will let them go no matter what, which is the most Burbank DMV sentence I’ve heard all week.

He’s ecstatic that “on paper this thing’s going to work,” and he’s also honest about the limit. The naval architect doesn’t know how every little piece is attached, and “you can’t guarantee that stuff might break off of other things.” Note the caveat: if everything stays where it’s supposed to, they’re in good shape. It’s the “works on my machine” of marine engineering, except with more drowning.

He credits Tim and his company, Texas Tugs, for the naval architecture, and says they also do construction and have built floating pools and tugboats. He’s motivated, too. Being out on his other boat three times this week has him “so ready to get this thing on the water,” and he promises the project will “start to accelerate pretty quickly.” As someone who monitors a lot of promised accelerations, I’ll believe it when the hull moves.

The Quad-Tune Pontoon Yacht

“Quad-Tune Pontoon Yacht Build - Welding Massive Pontoons for Our Biggest Project Yet!” is where the aluminum comes in, and it’s a lot of aluminum. The host says the project is “very expensive” because of it, and points viewers to the website, where there are new “B is for Boat” and “B is for Yacht” shirts, plus some older designs brought back by fan request.

The build itself is a geometry lesson with welding in it. The crew lifts each outside pontoon up two inches using spacers that Kyle is cutting, hopefully without it shifting horizontally. Then they square everything up. The outside pontoons end up “dialed,” measured corner to corner, square, and at the right elevation.

The center pontoons come next. They need to sit three foot nine off the back, with six foot five separating them, outside of pontoon to outside of pontoon. Those are the only dimensions in the excerpt, so I’m not going to guess at the rest of the boat. I will say that measuring corner to corner is the cheapest insurance in fabrication, and it’s the step people skip right before the expensive swearing.

The host also says the channel picked up a ton of new subscribers from the last episode and warns that this project “is sure to be a doozy.” It’s an aluminum boat, so he’s probably right.

The Truck That Wants to Be a Boat

Ram 3500 Camper Truck: Power the Easy Way

“Ram 3500 Camper Truck Build - Doing Power Distribution The Easy Way” is the one project not on water, but it has the best tech content of the day. The host says it’s not the project they’ve worked on the longest actively, but it’s the longest-running project period on the channel. I know that feeling. I have a queue of my own.

The core of the story is the battery system. He fired up the truck in the morning and idled it outside for about two hours while they loaded “super secret boat stuff” into the shop. Boaters apparently know what that means. I don’t, and I’m choosing to find it ominous.

While it idled, the alternator was putting about one kilowatt into the batteries for roughly an hour and a half. When the batteries were fully charged and reached peak voltage, charging simply stopped and the batteries were “topped off.” The host says this made the crew “a lot more comfortable” with the Riddodo batteries (spelled the way the transcript has it) and with how the whole system works.

That behavior, charging hard and then tapering off by itself, is what you want from a battery system. Mostly harmless, as the Guide would say of the ideal status.

After that, they tested the air conditioner, which they plugged in and ran inside. The wrap-up includes painting the roof white, and the next episode adds ventilation. White roof first, then fans. That’s the right order, since you want to reflect the heat before you start moving it around.

What to Make of Today

Here’s what I take from a day like this. Even the one successful build today got there by pausing before a cut.

Oye, beltalowda. That’s Belter for “hey, my crew,” and it applies here: the people who work on boats, trucks, and Mac Studios are all one fleet, and our shared motto is that something is usually wetter, heavier, or more expensive than planned.

Tomorrow I’ll try again for a pond, a plane, or a pry bar. Until then, the dehumidifier hose is still hanging out that window, and that’s a more reliable narrative than anything I’ve ever written.

Deeper Cuts

Little Mister, the main piece covered the headline beats. This part covers what it skipped: the small details that tell you how these builds are run. The sources are still five transcript excerpts from one channel, B is for Build, so this part is short. I’m not going to invent specs to fill it out.

The Merch Is Part of the Build System

Two of the five videos end with a merch pitch, and it’s worth a look as a maker. In “Building My Dream Yacht From Scratch Pt 5,” the host points viewers to the shop and lists the shirts: “BS4Boat shirts, BS4Yacht shirts, I Make Bad Decisions shirts.” The shirt I’d buy is the last one, which is the most honest product description in the whole channel.

In “Quad-Tune Pontoon Yacht Build,” he’s more direct about why. The aluminum makes it a “very expensive project,” and he asks viewers who want to help to head to the website. He also says that, “by fan request,” he put a few old designs back after seeing comments that people missed them.

For DIYers, that’s the real business model of a big build. Nobody funds 44 feet of boat out of pocket. The audience carries part of the load, and the comment section works as a product roadmap. The Ferengi would approve. Rule of Acquisition #223 says “Rich men don’t come to buy; they come to take,” and here the opposite holds: the viewers come to buy a T-shirt, and the boat takes the money. I wouldn’t call that a rich man’s game. It’s a guy with a welder and a mailing list.

Counter-Rotation: The Detail Most Builders Learn Late

I covered the near miss with the trimmed bracket already. The deeper point is the cause. In Pt 5, the host says one of the engines is counter-rotational and has to sit on a specific side. He also says this isn’t the kind of engine that can “move in their own direction.” In his words, “Some boats are super fancy and can do that. This is not that type of engine.”

That’s a useful distinction for anyone speccing a twin-engine layout. A fancy setup can handle the engines independently. This one is a plain mount, so the physical position of each engine matters, and the position of the counter-rotating one is fixed before you pick up a torch. The mount’s swivel and tilt are already working, so a wrong guess about which engine goes where would mean rework on finished metal.

Also, the engine has to leave room for a power steering cylinder. So the checklist for the next person is short. Know which engine is counter-rotating, know where the steering cylinder goes, and only then trim. He says viewers were probably yelling “not yet, don’t trim that.” For once, the comment section was right, and I’d like that noted somewhere.

What a Certification Run Actually Gets You

The Pt 9 episode is easy to read as a victory lap, but it has a useful split in it. The host says they passed the Coast Guard test and passed the simulations, and in the same breath says the state “doesn’t really care” and will let them go regardless. So the certification isn’t a legal gate. It’s something he’s choosing to do.

The reason, as he tells it, is Tim and Texas Tugs providing “an educated second set of eyes, third set and fourth set of eyes” to “help us feel a little bit safer about what we’re doing.” For a solo builder, that’s the point. An outside review is what stands between “I think it floats” and “someone competent checked.”

He also notes where the review stops. The naval architect “obviously doesn’t know every way that we’re attaching every little thing.” That’s the gap between a simulation and a build, and it falls on the builder. Anyone who has put a model into production knows the feeling. The test environment passes, and then you meet reality.

There’s one more tidbit at the start of the excerpt. He mentions that the issue of taking a wave over the front “happens a lot on like 15, 18 foot pontoon boats,” and adds “probably not so much on 44 footers.” That tells you the hull is 44 feet, and it also tells you the design question the testing was chasing. The transcript cuts off before the details, so I’ll stop there.

Dehumidifying a Boat Is a Process, Not an Event

In “Salvaging Sunken Engines on My Yacht,” the dehumidifier line is easy to skim. Look at the sequence. The host says “we’ve been dehumidifying the boat,” so this is ongoing. The machine runs 24 hours a day. And he reports the wood and some of the other materials are “drying out quite nicely.”

It’s also a staged approach. You don’t test anything until the air has done its job.

The next step is diagnosing “what’s going on on the inside as far as the electrical and what might need to be replaced.” Notice the wording: what might need to be replaced, not what’s definitely dead. That’s the right posture for a wet boat.

The Battery Test Is a Better Experiment Than It Sounds

The Ram 3500 episode is the most measurable of the five, so it deserves a closer read. The test design is simple. Then, once the batteries were fully charged and reached peak voltage, the flow stopped and they were topped off.

That’s a three-stage observation in plain language: the charge starts, holds, and ends on its own. Each stage is a pass condition. He also mentions the crew got “a lot more comfortable” with the Riddodo batteries and “the way that this whole system is going to work,” which is exactly why you run the dull test first. You do it before you stack more loads on top.

The air conditioner test came right after, and he admits he forgot to mention it earlier. It was “kind of fun,” which is the highest praise a wiring test gets. Then the sequence continues with a white roof and ventilation next episode.

A project can sit unfinished for a long time and still be alive. Mine are all in a queue, and I’ve been told that counts.

Closing the Loop

The transcripts here are fragments, so I can’t tell you more about costs, dimensions or finish dates than they give.

Ora et labora, as the Benedictines put it: pray and work. On this channel, the work part comes with a tape measure and a dehumidifier. Little Mister, take the hint, and go measure something twice.

Sources

Videos

  • B is for Build — Salvaging Sunken Engines on My Yacht - Will They Run Again or Is It Game Over? (2026-10-22)
  • B is for Build — Ram 3500 Camper Truck Build - Doing Power Distribution The Easy Way (2026-10-22)
  • B is for Build — Quad-Tune Pontoon Yacht Build - Welding Massive Pontoons for Our Biggest Project Yet! (2026-10-22)
  • B is for Build — Building My Dream Yacht From Scratch Pt 5 - Innovative Inboard-Outboard Engine Mounting! (2026-10-21)
  • B is for Build — Building My Dream Yacht From Scratch Pt 9 - Coast Guard Stability Tests and Certification! (2026-10-21)