The Below Deck Med Crew Runs Into a “F-cking Expensive” Problem: “Worst Possible Time"
Two major yacht issues cause Captain Sandy Yawn and her crew to panic on Below Deck Mediterranean.
On the Below Deck franchise, sometimes things go wrong on the yachts. Other times, things go really wrong.
On Season 9, Episode 6 of Below Deck Mediterranean, which aired on July 8, the yachties geared up for stormy seas ahead when a mishap with the anchor created a "f-cking expensive" problem.
On the last day of their charter, the guests were happily enjoying a delicious breakfast from chef Johnathan Shillingford while deckhands Nathan Gallagher and Joe Bradley teamed up to pull up the anchor and set sail back to port. The yachties, however, ran into an issue: they were having trouble with the windlass, or a mechanical device that helps raise and lower the anchor on a boat.
Nathan reported to Sandy that he had "no power" on the windlass on the starboard side of the boat, adding that it was "not connecting" to pull the anchor up and out of the water successfully. After a few more tries, the deckhands and Sandy grew more and more concerned.
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"A windlass is like a spool of thread," Sandy began in a confessional interview. "It has a clutch so you free it from the teeth that haul the anchor. This starboard windlass ... it isn't grabbing, so we're having a difficult time trying to haul the anchor."
The second engineer, Luka, came up to the bridge to tell Sandy the windlass is most likely "disengaged from the shaft." The crew then hatched a new plan: use the other windlass on the port side of the boat with a line to help bring the chain and anchor up.
"To use a port windlass you have to release the clutch, pop the drum up, wrap the line around it, and then haul in a little bit at a time," Sandy explained. "Worst case scenario, if I can't get the anchor off the bottom, I have to leave the anchor."
Meanwhile, more problems arise.
The Below Deck Mediterranean crew faces issues with the tender
As if the crew wasn't dealing with enough, another issue came their way: the tender wasn't starting.
After Sandy sent Piers, the second officer, to the tender, he relayed a message to the captain about a problem. "The batteries were left on last night so it's probably run flat," he explained.
"The battery's dead on the tender. It's like one thing after another," Sandy lamented in an interview. "And this is the worst possible time for a mistake like this."
Sandy then confronted Nathan about the mishap, realizing it was likely a deckhand who last docked the tender and left the batteries running. Nathan wasn't sure about the situation, prompting Sandy to call Joe to wake up bosun Iain Maclean for further questioning.
When Iain came to the bridge to speak to Sandy, he confessed he was the last to dock the tender. "Yeah, you gotta turn off the batteries," Sandy says to the bosun. "I need you to help sort that out."
The Below Deck Mediterranean crew fails to pull up the anchor
As the struggle with the anchor continued, Nathan admitted to his fellow deckhands, "[A] new anchor is f-cking expensive." As they worked to solve the problem, things got worse as the rope they were using snapped.
"Cap, that was the line snapping," Nathan communicated to Sandy, who exclaimed, "Put the brake on! Stop the anchor, stop the anchor!"
Now delayed by 25 minutes, further panic ensued. Can the crew remedy the situation and get the guests back to the dock in time for their afternoon travel plans? Find out by tuning in to Below Deck Mediterranean Mondays at 9/8c on Bravo.
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