A young auto mechanic clears the proverbial decks to move aboard a motoryacht, and, inadvertently, onto YouTube.
Some of us are born into boating. Others find our way into it—by chance, by destiny, take your pick. Gus Eisenhandler, a 26-year-old from New Hampshire, found himself living aboard a motoryacht—by way of a lawnmower.
A natural gearhead and tinkerer, Eisenhandler had a knack for disassembling and reassembling engines from an early age. Starting with his father’s lawnmower in the garage, it gradually evolved into dirt bikes, go-carts, then cars, and at the ripe old age of 12 or so, outboard engines—along with, by default, the small boats upon whose transoms they were slung.
“My first boat? I must admit that’s quite the story,” he leads in over a WhatsApp call from the salon of his 70-foot Broward, Sincerity, aboard whom he’s moored off Bimini. He’s also a natural-born storyteller.
“I was probably 12 or 13 years old, and I had this old dirt bike that I had bought and fixed up, and I managed to trade it for a 15-foot, I don’t even know what the brand of the boat was, but it was some old woodcore piece of junk with this ‘Tower of Power’ Mercury outboard on it, the tall six cylinder,” he says. “And it was on a dinghy trailer. My dad and I towed it home with our minivan, and we went through probably six sets of tires because the tires just kept blowing and blowing, and we’d go to Tractor Supply and buy another one. Finally we got this thing home and I fixed the trailer up and got the boat running and the boat was called One More Time. Perfect name.”
Anyone who can get a kick out of six blown tires while towing a mismatched boat and trailer in a minivan with their father has the stoicism of a Greek statue, I think to myself. Then there was the maiden voyage: “I somehow convinced my dad to take me out to Hampton Beach with this boat and hop aboard. It barely ran, but I had starting fluid with me and a couple jerry cans, and we managed to take this boat to the Isles of Shoals, which is, I believe, 10 miles off of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, maybe. And we’re in a 15-foot boat that somehow, my dad says, by the grace of God, we made it there and back in this thing with two life jackets and just, oh man.”
The thrill of adventure that only a boat could offer took hold in Gus with that one (relatively) short but perilous journey. He’s since put thousands of nautical miles on boats three, four, and now nearly five times its size. “I don’t even remember what happened to that boat,” he says. “I might’ve given it away because I think the motor blew up eventually. The boat was such a turd, but what really got me interested in boating, I’d say, was that boat.”
We all have our humble beginnings—or most of us, anyhow. Once Eisenhandler found out he could fashion car engines to inboard-outboard systems on boats, though, it was off to the races. “I loved them because I could buy a car motor, like a Chevy 350 out of a truck, and just marinize it and drop it into these boats. So I built a couple engines for various boats. That was a ton of fun.”
There’s a certain attitude in Eisenhandler that baffles me as we continue to discuss his progression both as a mechanic and a boater. Buying, building, blowing up and repairing engines sounds like Sisyphus and my own worst nightmare, particularly as a boater without even a soupçon of passable mechanical inclination or prowess. Yet to this mechanic/skipper, it just magnifies the “fun” of boat ownership.
The other fun part of boat ownership, when mechanical matters aren’t requiring attention, started to show through further: “I just was constantly boating. We lived near the Merrimack River, so there was one section of the river that was about 20 miles long. It stretches between Manchester, New Hampshire and Lowell, Massachusetts. So my friends and I would all just boat that section of the river, and I mean, religiously, we’d be out there four out of the seven days of the week after school or whatever, just cruising around the river, hitting the rope swings.”
Eisenhandler finished high school and figured he had a good thing going with engines, so he enrolled in A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) school to become an aviation mechanic. After passing the FAA tests, a stark realization dawned: “I just did not want to go to work for an airline or something,” he says. “I didn’t want to work for the man, per se.” He set up shop in his driveway, performing light repair and maintenance on cars and trucks. Soon, he had a rented space and hired a friend named Adam. Three years of working, day-in, day-out in a windowless garage proved he could have a successful business, but it didn’t necessarily enchant him. Then came the sort of all too sobering clarity that is elucidated by tragedy, which in turn is often the genesis of one’s travels. After leaving Eisenhandler’s boat one evening on a motorcycle, a friend was struck by a car and killed.
“So at that point, I kind of just had the feeling like, I want to get out of here and go on an adventure,” he says. “And I had heard of people traveling by boat, and that was of interest to me. So I said, well, shit, I should buy an old beater boat with a couple diesels in it and go on an adventure down to Florida to get out of the cold weather next winter. And essentially, that’s exactly what I did.”
Eisenhandler bought Quest, a 1988 Albin 37 in 2021, from South Port Marine owner Kip Reynolds, who was something of a liaison and has remained a mentor. Gus then posted about the purchase and subsequent refit to his otherwise fairly quiet YouTube channel, In Too Deep, not thinking a whole lot of it. He documented the overhaul—a not insubstantial undertaking unto itself—with unrelenting glee. Quick, smart edits, upbeat energy and music, and his pure, infectious enjoyment of every situation led and carried each episode. Each and every expensive roadblock met with a smile or a laugh; it all rolled off his back.
“My name is Gus, I’m 23 years old, I’m from New Hampshire, and I’m out here in Miami, Florida, on my boat,” goes Eisenhandler’s first full video introduction on In Too Deep. “I sold everything I had, shut down my automotive repair business, bought this boat and traveled down the East Coast. Here’s the story of our travels.”
In Too Deep quickly garnered tens of thousands of subscribers. Today, the cheery disposition with which this spritely twenty-something approaches any given conundrum is not only endearing but inspirational. He never loses his cool, you’ll hardly ever catch him swearing, and on top of it all? He always finds solutions. This is the coolness of a good mechanic. It is also the spirit of the best adventurers, at least partly inherent in all boaters, and the combination is a delight to witness: His upbeat brand of mechanical troubleshooting and laissez-faire cruising holds wide appeal—and his subscribers say as much.
And as for content? Old boats and engines are enough to direct a narrative, as anyone reading this magazine is keenly aware. Something is always bound to happen. ‘Man plans, and God laughs,’ goes the old Yiddish adage. But Eisenhandler laughs back.
Shortly after refitting Quest, she broke loose from a friend’s mooring during a storm in Massachusetts, landing in the marsh during a storm surge where she was left high and dry. Still deep in the mud during the next flood tide, Eisenhandler struggled with trying to tow and refloat her. In gear, the propellers wouldn’t turn, so, in one last-ditch attempt to free her, he told me, “I thought the boat was destroyed anyway, so I figured I might as well just jam the thing in reverse and send it.” To everyone’s surprise, off the mudflat she went. After a fresh haul, a flush and no major damage to speak of, Gus and Adam both set south for Florida.
Along the way, microtragedies abound, but the drama is refreshingly light for this genre of DIY reality series. Friends come and go for short and prolonged visits, as does family. Gus’s father, in particular, is overwhelmed at times with pride—as he should be. I look at Eisenhandler and want to go back and take a brick to my 26-year-old skull.
Toward the end of his winter in and around Florida, Eisenhandler began receiving calls to deliver slightly larger motoryachts up and down the coast through his growing network of boaters and In Too Deep. He left Quest on the hard in Port Charlotte, Florida on one such business matter to run a 43-foot Hatteras Double Cabin from North Carolina to Lake Erie, via the Erie Canal. Afterwards, he spent the summer of 2022 camping in a Winnebago Chieftain—purchased on a whim after the delivery—which he kept parked on the edge of a friend’s scrap-metal yard back in New Hampshire, along the Merrimack River. That season saw a pause in his seaward escapades, but tinkering with small outboards kept his focus on boating.
A call for another delivery—this one between Long Island, New York and Washington, North Carolina—capped off the summer, and then, just as Eisenhandler was packing his truck to return back to Quest in Florida, Hurricane Ian struck Port Charlotte dead on. Despite being positioned in what is generally regarded as a hurricane hole, Quest had two sailboats land on her, resulting in just enough damage for the insurance company to deem her totaled. Gus thought better of the wreckage, taking the insurance settlement and buying the boat back at a nominal $1,200 fee.
Still, the settlement came in well under what was already invested in Quest, so Gus was left in the lurch. “I spent two weeks fixing it up. I fixed the fiberglass, I took the rail off, ran it over with my truck, bent it back. I replaced a fuel tank. It was perfect. After that, I dropped it in the water and parked it on their dock right there at Safe Cove Marina. I was going to bring it through the Okeechobee Waterway, go back to Miami and just travel wherever the wind took me from there—or I guess wherever the motors took me.”
Coming off the dock, ready to settle affairs at the marina, Gus came upon “…this big old Hatteras. It had a big hole in the side of it from where a stand poked through it because it had tipped over in the same hurricane,” he told me, adding that despite the likelihood of an unbecoming pair of old Detroit engines, it still piqued his interest.
With the payout from the Quest minus the buyback price, yard fees in hand, Gus got in touch with the owner through the marina office and checked the Hatteras out. “I got in and it had 12-valve Cummins motors in it. Someone had repowered it in 2004 with 6BTAs. And I’m like, all right, this is fate.”
But the owner wanted twice what Gus had to offer. Still, this boat was destined for Gus and he knew it: He respectfully put up a lowball offer and, long story short, the 1968 Hatteras 50 was now his. So, Gus was back in the yard and on the hard for another two weeks with yet another boat. Having never really done any fiberglassing before Hurricane Ian, it was more trial by fire while fixing the hull. Then there were the engines, about which he was confident, but all the same, he still didn’t know if they were running. They weren’t; but they were cherry in no time.
“It was such a fun, high-pressure part of this adventure,” Gus recalls. “And I constantly find myself getting back into these high-pressure situations.” Hence the name of his YouTube channel. The Hatteras, Bella Rose, presented a whole new set of challenges. The running gear was bent, which Gus ended up replacing. A stop in Miami called for underwater shaft work and propeller replacement.
Bella Rose was afloat in two weeks flat. With 13 more feet and all the associated volume to go with it, Gus suddenly felt like he was driving a cruise ship. More poignantly, he felt that he was again, rightly and aptly, “In Too Deep”—and that might have been putting it lightly. Low on cash and with two old, albeit running boats on hand, he had his work cut out for him. In the video announcing the fresh purchase, Gus gives a preliminary tour of Bella Rose and her damage and pauses to proudly address the camera: “At this point, the name of my channel, In Too Deep, is probably becoming a little more clear.”
In Too Deep was also beginning to garner a following more rapidly than ever, thanks in no small part to the Hatteras purchase. Further, when Gus made mention that he had to relieve himself of Quest, a friend in Miami took her off his hands (on a gracious payment plan).
Aboard Bella Rose, Eisenhandler chugged back north to the Portland, Maine boatyard where it all started two years prior. He worked for the marina to pay for a slip as he had with Quest. He also took to buying and selling engines, small boats and bits and pieces of marine flotsam and jetsam that tend to constantly change hands around marinas. With a mechanic’s eye and touch, a little extra savings came together, which he would put toward another season in Florida—and in due time, no doubt, yet another boat.
But like boats, we too wear down. Just after arriving in Florida that fall, slowly mounting abdominal pains developed into an abrupt medical emergency that landed Eisenhandler in the hospital for two months. “Fortunately, I’m still on my mom’s insurance,” he told me. He might otherwise have been dead in the water, proverbially speaking.
Upon discharge from the hospital, Eisenhandler did precisely what his doctors surely wished he wouldn’t: He set north for Maine again. By the grace of YouTube, an In Too Deep fan named Josh who was feeling overburdened with domestic duties reached out asking to hop aboard for a spell of the voyage north, for $1,000. Unaware of Eisenhandler’s condition, Josh couldn’t have made the offer at a better time.
“I gave him a little interview to make sure he wasn’t a scary person,” Gus clarified. “It turned out he was great. He was such an awesome guy and such good company and great help that he stayed on the boat for the whole trip up to New York. Naturally, we talked a lot on the trip, and at one point, he asked me, ‘What would your next boat be?’ I said, ‘I want a big old Broward or Burger motoryacht.’”
Some might see this as a cautionary tale worthy of the recitation, “be careful what you ask for.” Eisenhandler? He knows what he wants and is prepared to take on whatever it might bring. A call came from Josh two weeks into Eisenhandler’s summer in Portland: “I think I found your next boat. It’s in Virginia.” The sale of a 70-foot 1979 Broward had, for some reason or another, gone south. The asking price was steep for Gus, but Josh had a hunch he could get it much, much cheaper. Gus forked over $150 for a flight to investigate, and despite her old twin 8V92 Turbo Detroits, which “looked like hell,” he’d offer “what the boat was worth in aluminum—a little more.”
Josh presented Gus’ offer to the owner, but it was rejected. But persistent as he is, Gus asked to speak directly with the owner, at which point his storytelling prowess came in handy once again. After regaling with his personal story, Gus left with a final proposition that any good salesman is hard pressed to reject: “If you sell me the boat at this price, you’ll never hear from me again.” It was a done deal. Gus and Josh then took the Broward 700 miles back to Maine, where Gus spent the summer overhauling her back at South Port Marine—which with no small thanks in no small part to Kip, has remained his home port. All said and done, the Broward was rechristened with her original name: Sincerity. A mention on In Too Deep led to a sight-unseen cash sale of Bella Rose.
And on and on he goes. I couldn’t help but ask Eisenhandler what his ultimate dream boat would be. He’s been slowly but consistently graduating from one boat to the next, and I can’t imagine where it might stop. Would he ultimately require a megayacht, helicopter and all? Something to the tune of, say, a Feadship? I have no doubt he could manage it, one way or another.
“I’m a big fan of Burger,” comes his tasteful response, with not a beat missed. “Also Westport. And, honestly, I’d even be happy with this Broward! It’s solid!” Gratitude speaks multitudes, and Eisenhandler seems to carry it in spades, wherever he roams.
You can find Gus’ YouTube channel here >>
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
