Below Deck Sailing Yacht season two is only three episodes in and they already can’t escape the pandemic. On March 15’s episode, the crew learned one of their new guests had a 101-degree fever, sending them into crisis mode as they had to quarantine and retest all of the guests. The news came the morning of the guests’ second day on the boat, when one of them, Hannah, came to tell the crew that her husband, Andy, was feeling sick. It shocked the rest of the crew, since the show had created a bubble to film the season during the COVID-19 pandemic. (The season took place August 2020 in Croatia, per a Reddit AMA with a produce.) Crew members were unable to leave the yacht between charters, and guests quarantined and tested ahead of their time onboard. “That’s going to be the biggest fuck-up in the fucking world, if he tests positive,†Daisy Kelliher, the chief stew, told another stewardess. And the rest of the guests didn’t take the news much better when Captain Glenn Shepard decided to take them back ashore to quarantine while they waited for test results. “I’ve been quarantine already for over a week, I’ve had enough of this,†one of the guests, Ryan, told Captain Glenn. “It’s really expensive to sit in a frickin’ box.â€
The episode ended before the guests’ tests came back, with them departing the yacht to quarantine. Even without knowing whether Andy did have COVID, it set off questions about Below Deck Sailing Yacht’s pandemic protocols — and not just how he could’ve contracted COVID after testing and quarantine. When Hannah told the crew about her husband’s fever, after sharing a room with him for the night, she wasn’t wearing a mask, and the crew didn’t start wearing masks and distancing when they got the news either. (Instead, they piled into the saloon for a crew meeting about the situation.) “They were all in close contact, unmasked, all the time,†a doctor who came aboard to conduct the tests observed. “I wouldn’t let them go anywhere.†As the guests left the boat, Captain Glenn said in a confessional, “We thought we could pull this off, and now, this could be it.â€
But the COVID scare didn’t seem to affect the crew for long. The preview for the next episode shows them waiting out the guests’ COVID test results by kissing and contemplating more hookups. In! A! Pandemic!