Hello! We’re a crewperson down on Below Deck Sailing Yacht, will our charter guests notice? Will our department heads stop fighting long enough to release some tension during yet another drunken night off? Let’s find out in my recap of Below Deck Sailing Yacht S3:E08 Big Fender Energy after the break!
We open in the middle of an argument between Chief Steward Daisy Kelliher and First Mate Gary King about basically nothing. One of his deckies, Kelsie Golgia had to serve a couple of coffees to guests as none of the Interior crew was up; Gary is outraged that some cushions weren’t uncovered and he’s a man down!
Like, okay, Gary, calm down.
He did lose deckhand Tom Pearson last episode because of poor judgement but just because the cushions didn’t uncover themselves, they aren’t going to lose tip money or something. Relax.
Never in the history of time has anyone every relaxed or calmed down when told to do either.
Gary moves up on deck to discuss the issue with Chief Engineer Colin MacRae who just luuuuurrrves to stir the pot. Daisy makes Bloody Mary’s (Maries?) for her hungover guests and all is right with the world.
Except.
There is trouble brewing in the kitchen.
Second steward Gabriela Barragan and chef Marcos Spaziani are communicating quietly, but he has not forgiven her for the five minute delay in supper the previous evening. She told him the guests were seated and wine was being served wine by Daisy, which means: feed people, but he was expecting her to say ‘fire’? Or something more direct?
I’m confused because I’ve never heard anyone on any of these shows say ‘fire’; only exactly what Gabriela said, that guests were seated and being wined. Weird. But there is tension in the galley now, Marcos pretending not to hear Gabriela and she’s watching him closely.
Captain Glenn Shephard pulls anchor and heads to the dock to drop off Primary Jim Blumenthal and his friends; Captain Glenn is worried about wind while docking so he’s got massive new fenders for the deckies to inflate.
The trip goes so quickly that Colin and Gary don’t have time to get the big fenders all in place; Gary radios to the Interior to get their help. Gabriela has been a deck stew and deckhand before so she’s helpful but third steward Ashley Marti mostly complains and doesn’t ask for instruction when she doesn’t know what to do.
I wouldn’t be 23 again for ANYTHING.
These fenders are a huge problem, nobody knows how to use them and the ropes aren’t long enough. They look like rank amateurs and the guests are watching every second of this. As is everyone watching the trainwreck on the dock.
I mean, they dock safely and the expensive paint job on the Parsifal III is untouched, so…yay?
Primary Jim hands over a huge tip envelope as Captain Glenn scrambles to blow the horn, bye guys!
Let’s guess tip! I will say….$17,000 based on the rocky start at the beginning and occasionally uneven service. And it is…$21,000 USD!! That’s $2530 each! That’s awesome! Kelsie even gets a little shoutout for how well she did on anchor watch, yay!
The crew gets dressed up and heads to dinner; I’m exhausted already thinking about the Interior crew fighting over Gary. Oddly, Gabriela seems to be picking on Marcos and I just don’t know why. She also intimates that Ashley is somehow felating Daisy.
Gabriela picks and picks more at Marcos, calling him out for making things about him (okay maybe true) and never admitting fault (okay sure) but doing it in a sarcastic and interrupting way meaning he will never ever get the message she thinks she’s sending.
Did I mention that everyone has been drinking lots?
Gabriela walks off by herself to be comforted by Daisy as Gary asks everyone what they did to irritate her. Somehow it resolves and taxis are called back to the superyacht.
Ashley jumps in with the boys, specifically with Gary in the back, who keeps jiggling her prodigious chest and then asking for a kiss.
I take back everything I said about Gary not being interested in sleeping with Ashley. He just has to be really, really drunk and she has to be the only woman within a 3 mile radius.
He’s so drunk that he heads to bed immediately upon return to the Parsifal III, that’s very unlike him. Daisy is disappoint.
I love it because we get to see more of Colin! He’s hilarious and until Marcos, he would have been my number one draft pick ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo.
He even gets in the hot tub! Just as Gabriela slides out of it in slow-motion. She decides to go to bed: good call! Daisy follows.
So now it’s just Ashley (now jiggling her own boobs), Marcos (watching allllll the jiggling closely) and Colin in the hot tub. They decide to get food, Gabriela actually went to Gary’s bed so when Ashley, Colin and Marcos burst in there, Ashley is dismayed to see her team member on the guy who was just kissing and jiggling her.
I saw in the promos that someone falls off a bunk so I’m watching through my fingers.
Ashley complains and complains; Daisy gets up to send Ashley to bed as you would a child, shouting ‘Ashley! Bed!” over and over; that’s complicated in that she also would have liked to be the one in bed with Gary.
So messy, ladies.
Gary is the least culpable in this situation; he was trying to sleep when all the women burst in on him, but he’s the one getting yelled at.
Oh man, I didn’t see, really, through my fingers, but it’s Ashley who falls off her top bunk and MAN that’s going to hurt tomorrow.
Oh dang, she hit her face on the doorknob on the way down. Ouuuuuch. That’s going to hurt so much tomorrow. Did she hurt her nose?
Everyone is extremely hung over the next day, Gabriela is late for work. In her typical aggressive way she blames this on Ashley not waking her up and makes sure to talk about Ashley sucking up to Daisy.
I like Gabriela, she’s very good at her job, she’s confident and assertive and I dig that. When she starts to feel uncomfortable, she reverts to aggression and it’s difficult to take.
Daisy’s just over the whole thing, she tells Gabriela she can’t be getting into Gary’s bed when he’s asleep and neither she nor Ashley can be drinking like that. Someone’s going to get hurt or someone’s going to get fired or both.
Gary, for his part, talks to Ashley about the making out in the taxi, which he doesn’t remember and she calls hooking up.
That’s…not hooking up, is it? I mean, aren’t there usually more bodily fluids, however contained?
Captain Glenn, oblivious, calls Daisy, Marcos and Gary to the crew mess to discuss the upcoming fifth charter; who’s coming on board?? Our Primary Charter Guest is Dawn Zacha who is a vegan foodie.
Why does it feel like these are just a series of challenges for Marcos? Is this what it’s like in real life?
We’re also got Dawn’s husband Tim Miller coming aboard with friend Lauren Izaks and some other names I didn’t catch. One vegan is going to make it trickier than All Vegans, but Marcos will work it out.
Honestly, I like Gabriela a lot and I was hoping she wasn’t that basic type of tough girl that can take zero constructive criticism about her behaviour but unfortunately she is. She pulls Ashley aside to tell her she’s thinking of quitting; have I mentioned they’re already a person down on the deck crew and that person isn’t ready yet? And why tell ASHLEY, who hates her?
Gabriela blames her attitude on drinking around people that don’t know her, again taking no responsibility for the drinking or choices about who she’s drinking around, just that she’s uncomfortable because she feels judged.
I mean.
Being young and mortified is difficult, I 100% get it. Push through, Gabriela, you are not one bad night and three tiny bad choices. Nobody died, nobody but you is judging you and it will be forgotten in an hour. You got this! Just breathe. She has such high standards for herself that maybe it seems like she’s failing but she’s just being human.
Ashley hugs Gabriela awkwardly, she’s trying!
Gabriela approaches Gary next to apologize for crawling in his bed to snuggle, he basically reiterates what I just said. I don’t like that he leans into the conspiracy theory that Ashley is trying to undermine Gabriela as second steward, everything just needs to calm down, yes?
It’s a much calmer morning on charter day, provisions arrive to our surprisingly clean boat, suddenly it’s guest arrival time!
With literally seconds to go, Gabriela drops a full tray of champagne all over the clean deck, how is this going to be cleaned up before the rich people show up?? All hands on deck work to wipe everything up and pick up the glass right up until the guests come on board.
I am always surprised at how little the guests look like their pictures, but I love Primary Dawn’s little floaty white dress.
I mourn how rarely you see women aging naturally on shows like this. People can do whatever they like with their bodies and faces, I have no right to expect anything at all, it’s just that it’s so different from what I see in real life, you know? I can’t say what it speaks to, I just hope I will always love my face as my face.
The guests are chill and pass the vibe check, now it’s time to head out of dock through big swells. Captain Glenn calls the water ‘lumpy’ but plans to sail anyway.
The sailing is GORGEOUS as always, what I would give to be out on the water like that. Forget the service, keep the food and just sail.
The ‘rolly’ waves start slinging everything about, downstairs the crew struggles to stay upright and things stowed as the tempo picks up. There’s a problem with one of the runners; Gary and Kelsie work on that, then Gary comes to help Colin close some banging glass doors in the salon. Gary’s hand is caught in between the doors (watched through fingers), I think he’s busted his hand and he’s basically one half of the deck crew right now.
With that, we’re out, cheers everyone!
