You know your day’s off to a less-than-great start when you cause a superyacht to run aground. And that’s exactly what the entire crew woke to in the early morning hours of this week’s episode of Below Deck Sailing Yacht. Well, not the entire crew, exactly. Tom Pearson was already up on anchor watch when the wind decided to start blowing out of nowhere at 31 knots. But the rest of the gang was roused in various states of panic and undress by Parsifal’s alarm. But before Colin Macrae and Gary King can even do much, the boat has run aground.
This is bad. Like, roughly 100 times worse than Parsifal crashing into the dock last season. After all, that ended up being merely cosmetic. This could cost the crew their entire season and send the sailboat into life support mode in need of major repairs. And it’s made even more stressful when the guests start waking up and wondering what’s going on. Somehow, out of either luck or genius, Captain Glenn Shephard works quickly with his first officer and engineer to save the day. With Tom creating an artificial wake in the tender, Glenn manages to rock the keel out of the sand. All the while, Ashley Marti‘s trying to keep the guests calm by serving coffee and pretending like a major emergency isn’t happening.
Once the boat is off the bottom of the seafloor, Colin‘s able to raise the anchor and a crisis has been averted. However, Captain Glenn still needs someone to blame. And his sights are set on Tom. It doesn’t matter that the junior deckhand insists everything happened so quickly that he barely had time to react. He gets chided for not waking anyone for help, and ends up storming downstairs to his cabin in frustration. And to make matters worse, Ashley essentially throws him under the bus by claiming he said out loud that they were dragging anchor without doing anything about it. Meanwhile, Colin’s left to go for a dive in order to make sure the bottom of the boat didn’t sustain any lasting damage. Luckily, it’s mostly just scratched up. No cracks or holes. This accident definitely could’ve been much, much worse.
Even before disaster struck, it was thankfully departure day. So the crew was already planning to sail back to Port Mahon to get the guests off the boat. And as if he didn’t already look bad enough, Tom makes an idiotic error during docking by throwing a loose heaving line ashore. The last minute chaos proved to be nothing but entertainment for the departing guests, and they leave happy and full of smiles. So at least that’s a good sign.
During the tip meeting, Captain Glenn once again lectures the entire crew on anchor watch procedures. But the tip ended up being decent: exactly $16,000. It doesn’t make up for the lousy revenge offering from the Roses last charter. But it helps soothe the crew’s wounds to the tune of nearly $1,800 per person. Though after the meeting, Captain Glenn consults privately with Gary. And neither of them feel they can trust Tom moving forward.
It’s time for the crew’s much-needed night out. But there’s some drama that needs to be addressed first. Daisy Kelliher pulls Ashley aside to discuss the latter’s growing hostility with Gabriela Barragan. And of course, the third stew blames all the tension on her second stew’s attitude problem. She’s also not sure she’s feeling Tom any longer after seeing how he reacted to the anchor watch debacle. So she may be ready to run that boatmance aground and leave it to die on the beach.
Eventually, the crew heads to dinner ashore in what appears to be the middle of a Menorcan street. It’s all very charming and picturesque. Less charming is Gary turning his flirtatious eye onto Gabriela. Otherwise known as the last member of the interior team he hasn’t hooked up with yet in some form or another. Across the table, Ashley‘s seething with jealousy beneath the fakest of smiles she can muster. Looks like the competition for Gary is officially on between the stews. On a cigarette break, Daisy gets Gabriela’s side of the story amid the stews’ drama. And ultimately comes to the conclusion that her two underlings simply don’t like each other all that much. When you boil the drama down, it’s a personality conflict.
This doesn’t stop Daisy, however, from attempting to mediate between the girls once they’re back on the boat. With some help from more than a little liquid courage. The stews start the tipsy conversation by hugging and insisting they like each other. But the good vibes don’t last long and Gabriela eventually walks away, refusing to talk out her problems. No surprises there. Besides, Ashley would rather stir up more drama with Gary, anyway. Which is almost immediately her next move. When she chooses to do body shots off the first mate. In the jacuzzi. Right in front of Tom. Needless to say, the deckhand hasn’t had the best 24 hours. And the last thing he needs to see is the girl he just slept with throwing herself at his boss.
But wait. It’s about to get worse. Moving things downstairs, Ashley decides the best thing to do is straddle Gary in his bed and give him a massage. Tom‘s disgusted by her behavior and has no problem calling her out. But Ashley, quite frankly, doesn’t care all that much. Because she wants to do what she wants to do. And Gary is the person she had in her sights all along. Tom was just a diversion on the road to getting what she really wanted. He doesn’t take kindly to the slight. And before you know it, the two are hurling names and insults at each other as Tom follows Ashley up to the deck and the camera crew scrambles out of the way.
Then, determined to get the last word, Tom decides the best thing to do is pout a drink on Ashley‘s head. But that’s not all. The argument goes yet another round, back down to the cabins, before Daisy intervenes and throws Tom out of the girls’ cabin. (I don’t even want to look up what “sket” means in Tom’s homeland of Northern England. But I think we can all use context clues to put the pieces together, yes?) Never mind that once Tom goes to bed, Gabriela actually gets the last word. Capitalizing off the drama, she swoops into Gary‘s bed before anyone can realize, wet bikini and all, to totally platonically sleep with the first mate for the night. They only end up making out a little, OK?
The next morning is a turnaround day. Which may end up being a good thing because the crew has quite a few issues to work out before the next round of guests step on board. Tom wakes up embarrassed and full of regret. And Gabriela has to make the walk of shame back to her cabin with Ashley. Of course, the first person Tom needs to speak to is Ashley. And after a pep talk from Kelsie Goglia, he prepares to approach his former flame with his tail between his legs. But the third stew isn’t about to let him get off that easily. Dragging him onto the dock, she pulls the “I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen” card. Tom’s apologies fall on mostly deaf ears. And it looks like the boatmance between this two is officially dead in the water.
Meanwhile, Captain Glenn calls Daisy, Gary and Chef Marcos Spaziani together for a preference sheet meeting. The next round of charter guests’ requests are fairly straightforward. They’re asking for a traditional Menorcan dinner, a seafood-palooza and a talent show put on by the crew. Should be easy enough, right? Let’s just hope and pray to the sea gods that there aren’t any accidents on this charter. But Tom can’t let go of his mess-up. It’s stuck in his head and he’s starting to spiral.
Finally, the morning of charter number four arrives. And while the crew handles provisions and last minute prep, Captain Glenn has a Tom problem to solve. Once again, he calls Gary and Colin together for a private meeting. And basically comes to the conclusion that Tom can’t be given any responsibilities this charter more serious than wiping things down with a shammy. But he wants to keep the decision completely hush-hush until he decides whether Tom should be fired altogether. This unfortunately doesn’t jive with Tom’s intentions. He woke up determined to prove his worth to Captain Glenn and fix his flailing reputation on the boat. And when Captain Glenn brushes him off with “we’ll talk later,” he starts to see the writing on the wall…
TELL US – DO YOU BLAME TOM FOR THE BOAT RUNNING AGROUND? WAS ASHLEY FLAUNTING HER CRUSH ON GARY IN TOM’S FACE? WILL CAPTAIN GLENN FIRE TOM?
[Photo Credit: Bravo]
