beerophilia

Jamie is maybe the first BD franchise bosun who seems to find lists useful right off the bat. But it looks like he just writes them in his "magic book" as we used to call them, and reads them off to his staff - doesn't even leave them the lists? We always had a deck log. We wrote any kind of relevant info in it, including a list of tasks to accomplish on the watch, any significant events that happened on your watch, etc. So at any point during their watch if the deckhands thought they had run out of tasks, they could return to the deck log, and check items off as they completed them. Anything not finished was passed on to the next watch. As bosun, I checked it every watch for accountability, as well as attending at least one watch change per day - they were 12 hour watches. But also, there are a TON of tasks on a boat that are daily tasks, especially when you're underway or at anchor, and we had laminated checklists for those things. I had several Benny-type deckhands quit on me, all after I had tried more positive communication styles on them and then given up and become more direct and matter-of-fact. One (on watch) put the gangway out in the middle of the night and left without telling anyone except her deck partner, and one (off watch) came up on deck as we were docking, tossed his duffel bag onto the dock and then jumped across before we could even get the gangway over. Thankfully, my chief mate backed me up in both cases, because they witnessed some of my conversations with these deckhands. That's what's missing from these shows: the chief mate is behind the scenes, when he normally would be the bosun's direct supervisor. So... my experience of trying to motivate and manage folks who seemed to need more positivity, even voiced that to me, didn't respond to that, either. This whole idea of "understand peoples' personalities and work with 'em" might be fine when you have a psychology degree or 20 years of management experience, but for a bosun who doesn't have a lot of people management experience (which included me) it doesn't work, and the captain shouldn't expect it. But in the end, it's a job. And yeah, you can have fun on the job, but you still have to DO THE JOB. Also, the guest who said "I'm definitely taking that chef home" -- I wish she would! And after Ryan dropped the dessert off and announced it, he... gave himself a weird little clap?

At least in this episode, Aesha told Magda what she needed to hear: "that's just part of having a job."

I've been bingeing BD and BDM, and also watched season 1 of BDA. After this, I am done with BDM and any show that has Sandy or Malia on it. I've despised Sandy's management since S2 (really, since the 3rd or so ep she was on of OG Below Deck, since that's where I saw her first). For the first 6-7 eps of this season, I really liked Malia as bosun (having been in that position myself), even though I had a LOT of problems with her previously. First: A chef does NOT rank above a chief stew. They both have 3 stripes. They are different departments. A captain might *value* a chef above a chief stew, because it's harder to find a chef in a pinch than to just get rid of a chief stew and promote the 2nd stew. Second: According to my yachtie friends, couples have no priority on board, totally made up. Third: It sounds like Hannah probably did something wrong. My assumption based on my experiences, was that she probably had a medical questionnaire from a crewing agency that the yacht uses, where she had to disclose any medications she was on. I've had to do this myself. She more or less admitted in a TH that she didn't disclose the valium. I won't address the CBD beyond saying that Sandy calling it "pot" over and over is just stupid. But lots of folks (at least in the US) don't even know what CBD is. Fourth: Sandy, give us a break. Stop chasing Hannah around the dock pretending that you care about her. Nobody is fooled by your awful performance. Get back into the galley and micromanage the new chef. Oh wait, you probably won't because he's Malia's boyfriend, so of course he's perfect. Fifth: Malia is a POS for 1) going through Hannah's stuff to get the photos and 2) pretending to CARE about Hannah when she had a panic attack... and THEN turning her in. And again, if Hannah didn't disclose her meds, she was wrong. But if Malia wasn't a total POS, this would have gone differently, including a conversation with Sandy, instead of a fucking text with photos. Also, if Malia is so concerned about Pete calling her "sweatheart," etc (which was totally wrong of him to do), she shouldn't tell her crewmates (especially the women) to "bro up" and "man up." Fuck off, Malia. Do you want to be empowered as a woman, or do you want to be a "bro?" Sandy prides herself on being a female captain. And sure, it was harder for her to get there than it would be for a man. But you know what? As a female captain, she is employing many of the same tactics that a man in that situation would employ, and there's NO REASON to believe she got to her position in any other way: She lies, gaslights, rewrites history, and is just a total and complete asshole. Fuck this show until Sandy is gone. I won't return to it, and wherever she appears on other shows in the franchise, I won't watch.

Yes! Especially to your moqueqa comment. I looked up recipes for it, and it would be super easy to make it gluten-free, vegan, and delicious. Substitute roasted cauliflower, grilled eggplant, grilled zucchini, or braise some cabbage and add it... so many taste things you could put into that instead of the fish, and voila! Delicious vegan & gluten-free dish.

I don't remember, and I'm not going to rewatch episode 1. Is this Malia's first stint as bosun? Because *especially* if it is, she can certainly be forgiven for not being the "perfect leader," whatever that might mean. All that "in over her head" crap just seems like... crap. To me, she seems fine. She's giving her crew instructions, and she's telling them when they did a good job, and she's certainly been firm about some other things. It seems like some folks here had "being the perfect leader" down pat, and really, it's just not as simple as you wanted it to be. I think it's ridiculous and kind of stupid that Sandy announced Bugsy's imminent arrival at the crew meeting and low-key gave Hannah shit for not being thrilled. Sandy has watched the previous seasons, and at the very least she knew exactly what Bugsy did and said to Hannah. Again, I don't love Sandy as a manager. Finally, what is it with those of you who have to comment on the crewmembers' appearances ALL THE TIME? Criticizing how they look, what they're wearing, weight they put on, their makeup & hair? As if the (somewhat manufactured) drama in the show isn't enough, can't you just leave peoples' appearances out of it?

I'm guessing the gangway wasn't safe for guests to cross because there was a small wooden crate propping it up on the top of the ship's railing.

This episode has brought me to my (so far) maximum dislike of Sandy. The previous episode (or the one before that?) where she suddenly went at Joao about the problem with the jet ski, I thought that was totally uncalled for, although Joao probably should have just said "yes, Captain" and checked to see if it was a fuel problem or whatever she said. But this episode, the way she goes after Hannah to get all the interior staff on deck because... the table wasn't set? And because... all the deckhands, who have completely different duties, got up and performed those duties. I guess since the galley seems to be functioning well, Sandy just has to stick her asshole nose in somewhere else. From reading posts in this forum, it seems like Sandy must be returning for the following season, and that makes me sad. Between Sandy constantly blurring the lines between staff/friends (with her hugs, I love yous, etc), and sudden, super-selective micromanagement, I just can't stand her at all.

In my deck experience, we were trained to put our uniforms on for any "situation," simply because the uniform itself grants a crewmember an air of authority. I don't think he used this tactic to the best effect, though, since it didn't seem like he and Collin really tried to defuse the situation. To me it seemed like they let it almost get out of control before responding and removing the "guest" from the ship.

I don't believe for a moment that Sandy wasn't aware of this "relationship." Ross & Katie weren't exactly making a secret of it, sometimes hugging & kissing openly in passageways and on deck. I suspect the deck crew was running smoothly enough that she didn't want to disturb their operation by nipping that in the bud. Every captain I worked for on similar-sized ships, with larger crews, showed their knowledge of the relationships on board by randomly bringing them up, usually while I was standing lookout for them in the early mornings.

This doesn't excuse the safety hazard that crewmembers might be too passed out to wake up to a fire alarm, but: working on a ship (as deckhand and later bosun), if we had a fire at the dock, our one responsibility was to get everyone off the ship and onto the dock. When you're at the dock, the local fire department comes to put out the fire, maybe in conjunction with the harbor master. The important thing is to get all the people off the ship and accounted for, so the firefighters know if they have a rescue mission in addition to putting the fire out.

Eddie is basically a first mate in training (so far) in this season. If you remember the beginning, there was a guy introduced as "chief officer." This guy is likely the true chief mate / first mate / first officer -- all pretty much the same thing in the passenger industry. I don't see this arrangement as sustainable, to be honest. 3 active deckhands on a boat this size just doesn't seem like enough for all the cleaning, polishing, and guest-focused stuff ("toys" and picnics) on a large charter yacht. Of course, I'm way behind, just watching now, so I guess I'll see the truth of the matter as I watch.

I've been reading these forums as I watch the show, and I didn't plan to ever respond because... well, at this point I'm three years behind. But I've read a lot of posts with questions and conjecture about many different aspects of these episodes, and I thought I'd finally chime in because I have about 8 years of experience working on small cruise ships, working my final season as bosun. We carried anywhere from 75-100 guests, so it's a larger scale than these yachts, but there are still a lot of similarities. My only yacht experience was a delivery with no passengers. I was considering going to work on yachts at the time, but I decided against it partly due to the behavior I saw from the crew every time we went into port. First, crew interactions / relationships / hook-ups. Unfortunately, most of them were almost exactly the way they're portrayed in this show. I avoided them for the most part, because they were usually messy and caused a lot of drama. Near the end of my deck career, I did begin a relationship with a stew, and to my surprise it lasted the entire season and several months after with no drama. But in my experience, that was a rare occurrence. Second, Captain Lee. He doesn't want to "babysit." That's fine, but his way of not babysitting seems extremely hands off, and the result is clear. But what we don't see here is whether the chief mate plays any kind of a role, and he should probably be the liaison between the captain and the bosun. I've seen some speculation here that Captain Lee isn't the "real" captain; my guess is that he's been chosen as the face of the boat, while the chief mate/relief captain actually does a lot of the captain's work. I think typically they would alternate watches in some way, probably adding up to 12 hours per day. Each working something like 8 hours on, 4 hours off, 4 hours on, 8 hours off. Although since they spend so much time at anchor and docked, I'd expect to see the chief mate on deck once in a while. The chief mate should have stepped in when there were problems with the deck staff, and should have coached any bosun who needed it (which seems to have been all of them) on leadership. And every single one of them so far has needed it. The chief mate should definitely have stepped in during the problems with Andrew, Nico, EJ (who in my imperfect opinion was one of the best bosuns to appear so far), Kelley, Chandler, Ashton, and Rhylee. Speaking of Rhylee, she deserved better. And better would have been mature coaching, instead of constant unproductive criticism. On the other hand, we didn't see what happened off-screen. It's possible that the chief mate did some coaching that we didn't see. Having said that, the captain of an Alaskan fishing boat should know how to tie a bowline. A bowline is in the top 5 (if not top 3) knots used on a ship. And while she said during that scene on the foredeck that she did it, I would say after pausing the video that it looked inconclusive to me. There are a couple ways to mess up the bowline such that it still looks like a bowline upon casual examination or from a weird angle. From the edit we saw, it still looked like Ashton should've handled it differently. A "show me, I didn't see it" would've been good, and obviously he should've had Tanner demonstrate and practice, as well. But here's the thing: previously, when Tanner was trying to get Rhylee to tie off the swimming pool line and she just wasn't doing it, she could have tied it off on a cleat on the swim platform. Kate is good at the material functions of her job. She can put together meal services, parties, and picnics like a pro. She's a good advocate for the guests. But she is so full of snark and passive-aggressive comments for crew members, it's ridiculous. She shows almost no respect for her stews, unless they're better at service than the other stew. She "runs out of patience" with Simone's service skills before she's even completed one charter on service. Sorry you didn't get to hand-pick your stews, Kate, but how do you expect them to get any better if you don't try. And again, we don't know what happened off-camera, but this has been a theme since she first came on board. To be honest, I think Adrienne would've been a better chief stew in the long term, even though in her one season she wasn't as organized as Kate. During my time on cruise ships, I saw two hotel managers (our equivalent of the chief stew position) fired for pretty much the same kind of people management. As for the awful behavior in this episode, someone should have knocked on Captain Lee's door that night and told him what happened. Considering the potential safety ramifications, I'm a little surprised he didn't share any disappointment with that not being done. I'm sure he would've been pissed, but it's his job. When I worked on ships, every single captain wanted to be awakened for problems of much lesser magnitude. Ashton should've been fired for this. He clearly has a lot of work to do, and needs therapy. Who knows how many other times this has happened between Ashton and women? It's awful to think about. When it comes down to it, I think the show highlights a lot of the real truths about working on small ships. Chefs with egos & tempers, dramatic interpersonal relations between crewmembers, and the great places they explore. And ultimately, that's the point of my LONG post. We see a lot of uncomfortable situations and a fair amount of just plain ugliness on this show. I'd say it's worse than I experienced, but thankfully my experiences were never on a reality show.