Below Deck Sailing Yacht's Colin MacRae Reveals What He Has Since Found Out About the Dock Crash
The chief engineer gives new insight into the incident and what it's really like working with Captain Glenn Shephard.
The Below Deck Sailing Yacht crew just experienced one of the most intense moments in Below Deck history when the Parsifal III crashed into the dock in the May 17 episode of the show.
Even with years of experience on boats under his belt, Parsifal III's chief engineer Colin MacRae revealed that this was "one of the craziest moments of my superyacht career" in a post on Instagram on May 10 as the episode where we would see a snippet of the incident got ready to air.
To make matters worse, Colin said that the crew isn't totally certain about what actually caused the yacht to not move forward as it headed toward the dock. "To this day we have no idea what exactly went wrong. Which kinda sucks because if we knew why, we would be able to fix whatever went wrong," he explained. "It’s like when your computer sometimes freezes without any warning or explanation. Just terrible luck I guess…"
Colin shared more insight into the dock crash in a post on Instagram on May 22 in which he praised Captain Glenn Shephard's leadership style and how he handled things in the aftermath of the incident. "He has so much respect from us crew, and his management style is to give maximum freedom, but with this comes maximum responsibility," Colin, who has worked with many different kinds of captains in his 13 years in the yachting industry, said of Captain Glenn. "He extends this onto himself as well, and when we hit the dock on [Below Deck Sailing Yacht], he didn’t point the finger or pass blame on anyone until we figured out what went wrong."
In regards to what did go wrong when the yacht crashed into the dock, Colin said, "We have since found out that this is actually a fairly common malfunction with the controllable pitch propellers in the setting that we had it on."
Even though this malfunction was out of the crew's control, Colin said that he admired the way Captain Glenn took accountability. "Nevertheless, hitting the dock will always look bad on the person at the helm, but Glenn has taken this with humility and humbleness, and for this he has my utmost respect," Colin shared. "I don’t want to speak for the rest of the crew, but I would bet my bottom dollar that every single one of them would work for him again in a heart beat, just as I would, which says a lot about the man."
Captain Glenn showed gratitude for Colin's message in the comments section of his Instagram post, writing, "Thanks Colin, that means a lot coming from a top notch Engineer like yourself."
Though we witnessed a rare moment of anger from Captain Glenn after the dock crash, he seems to now be able to look back on the incident and laugh, quoting Homer Simpson by writing "DOH!!!!" about "the most heartstopping moment in [Below Deck] history" on Instagram on May 10, followed by another joke in a May 12 post featuring a selfie of the captain: "Uncle Glenn hiding out from the authorities after smashing a perfectly good dock."
The Below Deck Sailing Yacht boss, along with two of the show's producers and second stew Dani Soares, recently broke down everything about the crash, from the cause of the malfunction to the chaos on deck and in the interior to Captain Glenn's fiery reaction. Check it out in an exclusive interview with Bravo Insider.
See what's on the horizon for the Parsifal III crew, below.
