All aboard! All 197 sumptuous feet of the St. David are setting sail in Grenada, with Below Deck Adventure’s Captain Kerry at her helm. It’s great to see the return of Chief Stew Fraser, but it’s less great to see the “grotesque†shade of teal the staff is compelled to wear this season.
Our new bosun Jared has previously served as captain on smaller vessels, but he’s anxious about his new big-boat, big-boy job. We learn that he also used to build houses, as evidenced by a photo of some random octagons of wood in somebody’s backyard. He makes me think of a less sinister, semi-anesthetized Conner O’Malley character.
Lead deckhand Ben and his ponytail are back for another season. He’s single again after his boatmance with Camille ended when she, he says, cheated. Actually — it sounds like the entire crew is single. Someone should notify the Grenadian Coast Guard just to be safe.
Deck crew newbie Kyle, a Scot with an A+ accent, recounts getting his ass disastrously branded with a coat hanger. He appears fully naked in a subsequent scene, and I find myself zooming in on what is either a tattoo or possibly a brand on one butt cheek with an intensity I can only describe as forensic (Enhance!). Results: Inclusive. Québécoise Sunny has similar interests. She finds it hard to listen to “eye candy†Ben when he attempts to teach her things because her gaze is super-glued onto his ass. This, to me, is feminism.
Fraser, who’s waiting to allocate stripes until after the first charter, is cautiously optimistic about his stews. There’s Barbie, who comes from a “good family,†a.k.a. money, honey. (For shits and giggles, I would love to hear Barbie define a “bad family.â€) She’s packed her own sheets, pillows, and a collection of Louis Vuitton bags she has no storage space for, so she sort of just cuddles with them in bed. More upsettingly, it looks like her personal sheets don’t actually fit on her bunk, leaving tons of bare mattresses exposed for her to roll around on, which is objectively vastly more disgusting than just using the standard-issue crew bed linens. The tall, blue-eyed blonde, improbably not named Barbie, is Cat (who is giving me a little Karen Gillan, do you see it?). Xandi, who’s previously been a chief stew herself, is happy to hang back on St. David and let Fraser handle this particular circus and these particular monkeys while she makes beds and otherwise avoids human contact. Also, she’s a witch and a vampire and says her collection of crystals may be the only thing standing between her and shock therapy. (I like Xandi.)
Down in the galley, we have Chef Anthony, who refers to himself in the third person as “Frenchie†and is here to “do a little French French oui oui oui,†he explains to the camera while shimmying.
In his very Aussie accent, Captain Kerry reassures the crew that their physical safety and mental health are both important to him, so it’s okay if they need to have a “bit of a sulk†once in a while. “What’s a sook?†Barbie asks. No notes — or should I say, naurrr notes?
The first charter’s primaries are Brian and Rebecca, middle-aged oil-money newlyweds from Texas, who, to me, are utterly interchangeable with their friends (likely a feature, not a bug for this group). They’ve requested a multi-course dinner for night one and an ‘80s Miami dance party for night two. Is that the polite way to ask the crew to source coke for you while maintaining plausible deniability?
These guests, who heavily imply that they enjoy swapping spouses, are exhausting. I have zero issues with non-monogamy, nor any intention of yucking anyone’s sexual yum, but these people are the kind of over-the-top, performative, freshman-boy horny that makes me inclined to believe that they have never actually had sex. Their screentime is an unending series of underwhelming, leering jokes about peering in the master suite’s windows, how “moist†they’re feeling, how they’d suck dick for beef carpaccio — or maybe it’s the beef carpaccio is like a dick, or possibly both? I’m sorry, but anyone who bases their entire personality around a single interest, whether that interest is Lord of the Rings or fucking your friend’s husband, is terminally boring to me.
The crew is off to a solid start, even living up to the exacting standards of Captain Kerry’s full-boat walkthroughs, during which he checks that all the zippers on cushions are pointing down and whether the sink stoppers are consistently open or closed. But that’s not to say there aren’t a few blips. Jared, already in a teensy bit of trouble for messing with the anchor without giving Captain Kerry a heads up, now proceeds to drop the anchor two and a half shots (a shot is 90 feet), whereas Kerry had already told Ben to drop it just one shot. No, Ben did not specifically pass on that directive along to Jared, but in his defense, he thinks a bosun should’ve known two and a half shots was way too much chain to drop (risking dislodging the anchor) and connected with the bridge beforehand anyway.
Ben observes that Jared — by this point dissociating in the crew mess rather than getting their collective to-do list prepped for the next day — is not off to the best start, probably thanks to nerves, and should lean on him more for support. Also, Ben says he feels “dumber†around him, which is a little mean, but then again, our bosun did spend much of the day on a side quest searching for his pants and putting on multiple pairs that didn’t belong to him in the meantime.
While Xandi takes on housekeeping and Barbie takes on service, Cat is tasked with behind-the-scenes interior miscellany, to her displeasure. She feels like she’s spread too thin. Girl, it’s been hours — you are realistically, like, one percent of the way through the charter season. Fraser finds her crying in the crew mess (listen, I’m a crier too, but I will note that the reason you cry in the crew mess and not in the privacy of your bunk is because you want someone to find you crying), reassures her that she’ll be just fine, and then once he’s out of earshot, immediately mutters to himself, “She’s not gonna last.†Masterful comic timing.
Anthony’s food is gorgeous, especially his “deconstructed†lobster pad thai, which the guests love. But being a one-man band is not coming naturally to old Frenchie, who’s used to marshaling a full restaurant staff. The galley is a mess; it takes him forever to put away the provisions, and now he’s delayed an hour and a half between courses at dinner. The lag has the guests so drunk and so tired that, to my surprise, they don’t even have it in them to crack a single joke about the pearl necklaces draped all over the tablescape.
This recap has been revised.