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Below Deck Med's Captain Sandy Yawn on the New Crew: "I Don’t Tolerate a Lot of Crap"
Get to know the new #BelowDeckMed boss.
Get ready, Below Deck Mediterranean fans. There's a new captain in town this season.
Captain Sandy Yawn will be leading this motley crew of yachties as they navigate the rough waters of pleasing the most hard-to-please charter guests and living and working with each other. She'll be the first female captain to appear on either Below Deck or Below Deck Med, and that's something she's thrilled about. “I want to take this opportunity and inspire a lot of women and say to them, ‘Get on deck,'" Captain Sandy recently told the Sun Sentinel. “The maritime industry has a lot to offer. There are few female captains...For me, it’s about saying to these women, ‘Hey look at what the yachting (world) offers.'"
Knowing how few female captains there are in yachting, you might be wondering how Captain Sandy got into the industry in the first place. She told the Sun Sentinel that she "grew up on boats," boating with her family at Fort Hamer, Florida, and that as a pisces, she's "attracted to water."
Captain Sandy would go on to become a certified scuba diver and a crew member on a boat, according to the Sun Sentinel. The owner of that boat suggested that she attend Maritime Professional Training school in Fort Lauderdale to learn about the financial part of yachting in the early 1990s. She received a Master of Oceans All Oceans license from the United States Coast Guard. Captain Sandy has led yacht charters in New England, the Bahamas, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
Captain Sandy has basically seen it all in her 27 years in the industry, from meltdowns to fires and even pirates, she explains in a preview of this season of Below Deck Med. But her toughest challenge yet could be dealing with the crew. "I am liked by a lot of crew and I am not liked by a lot of crew because I don’t tolerate a lot of crap," she teased to the Sun Sentinel. “If you are going to whine about everything, this isn’t your boat.”
We'll see what she means when Below Deck Med returns on Tuesday, May 2 at 9/8c. Until then, get ready for all the ebb and flow, below.
