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TV show- "Below Deck"

Discussion in 'General Yachting Discussion' started by ychtcptn, Jul 26, 2011.

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  1. bobhorn

    bobhorn Member

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    Not to mention the language...............
  2. Gulfer

    Gulfer Member

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    Sort of off the subject, but is it just me or is Andy Cohen in the After Hours show always look like he is high on drugs. His pupils are so large. It's disturbing, I can't watch it.
  3. NYCAP123

    NYCAP123 Senior Member

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    Watching the show is hard enough for me (I have to watch 2 episodes each week cause the wife invariably falls asleep during the current episode:(). Definitely not enough interest for me to watch the After Hours part.
    Yeah Bobhorn I was taught that when someone curses it's because they're too ignorant to know the words needed to express their feelings. Maybe expected on a construction site, but not on a supposedly classy yacht. DK what to say about a woman screaming that she wants to "punch someone in the scrotum" except that her BF better learn to sleep with one eye open or just flee.
  4. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    I play chef on charter as well as captain... small boat, 84’, mostly because I love cooking.

    i can tell you without a doubt that being a captain is like being on vacation. The stress of being a chef is far greater... as soon as a meal is served, you have to start prepping the next one, you have to start baking the next desert... then you have the wrenches thrown in like the primary guest not having asked his friends if they had any food allergies... or the 12 year old who doesn’t like anything and begs his mom for Mac n cheese...

    it’s the highest stress job on a boat. And while at our level we want to serve great food, the standards are not quite what they are on a 150 footer.
  5. olderboater

    olderboater Senior Member

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    No she wouldn't. She's going home and doesn't care about you anymore. She'd leave and that would be the end of it.
  6. olderboater

    olderboater Senior Member

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    As Pascal says, being a chef on a charter is far more high pressured than any other job on the boat. Now, on a boat the size in this year's below deck, there would likely be a sous chef and a crew cook as well. At least one of those if not both.

    I love when people say it's not realistic. Name one tv show that is? Friends? Cheers? In fact, it's very similar to all tv shows in that it puts a lot of things that do happen over extended periods into single episodes. Talking to those who have worked on boats that size and larger over long careers, they've seen nearly everything that takes place on Below Deck, but just seen it over decades, not a season. For instance, they've seen every stew and deck hand and chef personality, but typically one on a crew, not three, four or five on a single crew. They've seen every type charter guest but not typically one strange group after another. Things like the insane preference sheet that set off the chef (who was already wanting to go home) also would have typically been addressed in advance by the charter management team. They would have been told very simply that all the different foods could be accommodated over a month, but not on a 4 or 5 day charter and that they were dealing with a galley, not a restaurant, and 10 courses were just not practical for a normal meal length, 7 being the absolute maximum. Still a captain would have dealt with it, but the chef had already made up her mind. The captain never asked (at least that we saw) the most basic question anyone would have asked her and that is "What is really going on here." Any manager would have realized she wasn't reacting just to the preference sheet.

    I wouldn't hire most of the crew and would fire most, but then my crew would never make the excitement of Below Deck and have all the conflict and make a similar tv show.
  7. gr8trn

    gr8trn Senior Member

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    That sounds like the truth, yacht chef (one worth their salt) must be hard to come by. As you point out cooking must be a joy to make the endless cooking and planning and prepping worth while. It would be nice to have a sous chef and chief bottle washer too. Sounds like you get to do it all.
  8. NYCAP123

    NYCAP123 Senior Member

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    You're way more kind and less vengeful than I am.
  9. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    In our case our third crew handles the dishes and cleaning... I get to do what I enjoy :)
  10. Pascal

    Pascal Senior Member

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    I didn’t take that episode where the chef gets the pref sheet right before the charter but I don’t see this happening in the real world. It takes time to plan menus and provisioning, it s not a last minute thing.

    Unless it s a last minute booking we get the pref sheets a few weeks ahead and review them. We also use our own pref sheet as some of those supplied by brokers can be real silly. Like what daily newspaper would like and do you want fresh flower arrangements everyday. Yeah... try that in the Exumas :)
  11. Capt J

    Capt J Senior Member

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    She'd pay a big price with me, just with what she said to the Captain.
  12. olderboater

    olderboater Senior Member

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    There is no price to pay. She's terminated. You'll never give her a decent reference. But that's "the end." Over and gone. I would have had "Security" escort her off the boat, never out of someone's sight. I've had employees in companies before who had to be escorted off the premises by security. We had one in one of the GA hardware stores we bought who had removed by law enforcement and had a trespass order issued. Some one decides to quit, there's nothing you can do to stop them. If they have a contract and that limits when and whom they can work for you can enforce it. In my mind, they quit, it's like Kevin O'Leary says when someone turns him down, "You're dead to me." Really they're gone and that's it. Now, I would never have attempted to have gotten her to change her mind, even for one day. I'd bring in caterers or whatever it took but would not have had her working for me another minute.
  13. Ken Bracewell

    Ken Bracewell Senior Member

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    BINGO, OB
  14. Kevin

    Kevin YF Moderator

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    Just out of curiosity, can anyone view this Youtube vid?



    Bravo made a big deal of having all 3 captains on for a groupchat last week, but aside from snippets on IG I've not been able to watch the entire video. I'm not getting a geo-block message from YT, so I'm assuming it's something else.
  15. NYCAP123

    NYCAP123 Senior Member

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    Having no problem other than a little buffering here and there. Now 2 1/2 minutes in. Can't stand to watch any more.
  16. Kevin

    Kevin YF Moderator

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    LOL That bad, eh? I only watched the part where the discussed the contact with the pier.
  17. NYCAP123

    NYCAP123 Senior Member

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    I have to be very bored and there has to be nothing on the other 200 channels for me to watch the shows. They'd have to pay me to listen to them discuss the shows or their lives.:(
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