july 22–august 4, 2019 | new york 61Tusha, who owned the charter company
that rented the boat to 51 Minds, the
yacht’s owner was uncomfortable with
Taldykin taking the helm, even though he
was technically qualified. Right before
filming began in St. Martin, producers
and the owner asked Rosbach. He agreed
because his boss asked him to.
“Lee was really pissed, which was really
funny because now he loves it,” says Tal-
dykin, who thought about quitting the
show before producers persuaded him to
stay on as Rosbach’s onscreen No. 2. (Tal-
dykin left after one season and now runs
his own yacht-charter company.) The
switch ended up being a brilliant decision.
After Below Deck’s 2013 debut, Captain Lee
immediately became its biggest star when
he kicked the show’s first charter guests off
the boat after a crew member discovered a
white powder and rolled-up bill in one of
their cabins. Rosbach was exactly what
audiences wanted a captain to be: a no-
nonsense authority figure who could punc-
ture anybody’s sense of entitlement, no
matter their tax bracket. His white hair and
chunky gold dolphin jewelry glittering with
diamonds certainly help too. (Last year he
published a memoir, Running Against the
Tide: True Tales From the Stud of the Sea,
and has 224,000 Instagram followers.)
“Yachting isn’t for everybody, and
there’s a lot of pressure because you’ve got
a lot to do and a very short time to get it
done,” Rosbach says. “Some people can
handle it, some people can’t.”
Rosbach doesn’t pick the crew, but he
fires them at his discretion and says he
runs the boat on the show the same way
he always has in his 30 years on the job.
Most cast members don’t last more than
one season, two if they’re lucky. Each sea-
son, some seem less concerned with run-
ning the boat well than getting screen
time. That said, while most are at the very
least competent, producers do seem to try
to find one or two completely incompe-
tent people every season, and viewers
wonder if those people will get fired,
which they sometimes do.
Obviously there’s a great deal of sex in
confined spaces. Many yachts in real life
forbid intra-crew relationships, but that
wouldn’t make for much of a reality-TV
show. Cabin cams regularly capture the
cast changing and hooking up. But rela-
tionships almost never work out, because
they’re on a boat on a reality show and you
really can’t escape the person or the ter-
ribleness of being on-camera.
Part of the show’s alchemy lies in the
way it portrays how proximity to wealth
can change people. “When you first get
into yachting, your taste kind of elevates
because you’re around such wealthy
people,” says the show’s chief stewardess,
Kate Chastain. “You get a tip and you’re
like, I earned this. You would never usu-
ally splurge on that, but you become
much more comfortable with splurging.”
This is why deckhands don’t think twice
about throwing down their tip money for
$12,000 bottle service on their nights off
or for a “starter watch.” Chastain says she
can spot yachties from afar, whether
they’re in uniform or not. “If it’s a guy,
and he’s got a kind of new, kind of nice
watch and kind of nice sunglasses—we’re
not going to push full-on Rolex, that’s a
captain,” she says. (“I was wearing a
Rolex,” says Rosbach, recalling the first
time he and Chastain met. Boat captains
make on average $1,000 per foot of boat
length per year, he tells me; the boat in
Below Deck’s first season was 164 feet.)
One thing that isn’t quite real about
the show: While the people who charter
the boats on Below Deck pay for their
passage, they receive around half off the
boat’s usual price and don’t get to stay
aboard for more than a couple nights at
a time. It’s still an eye-popping amount
of money—guests who stayed two nights
on the boat used for season six would
have spent around $42,000 plus a cash
tip—but much less than the industry
norm. Chastain says most regular char-
ter customers would never appear on the
show (they can do without the exhibi-
tionism discount), which means fans
don’t get to watch the superrich who
actually live #yachtlife.
Instead, they get Sarasota real-estate
agents named Brandy. The day Pienaar
went overboard, she and her squad set
down their tequila to grab the railing on
the back deck and peer over for a better
look at the man flailing in the water.
“That was so scary,” Brandy said when he
emerged unharmed except for a minor
foot injury, and she and her girlfriends
were soon distracted by a lunch of flank
steak with red-wine reduction and
turmeric-infused shrimp.
Rosbach hasn’t been able to shake off
the accident so easily. It was the only
near-death mistake in the show’s history
and the first time Rosbach had a man
overboard in his career. It’s an incident
he says he still thinks about “all the
time,” and one that yachting profession-
als not affiliated with Below Deck say
they can’t imagine happening under
normal circumstances. Of course, in the
show’s own complicated way, that’s more
or less the point. ■Additional reporting by Josef Adalian.Reality-show star overboard!
Ashton Pienaar being dragged
into the sea, as captured by one of
Below Deck’s many cameras.