Forget the charter guests, the real drama is behind the scenes this season of Below Deck.
On a recent episode of WWHL, Captain Sandy defended firing Hannah after being attacked on social media for how she handled the situation. To give you a refresher, Hannah had a panic attack (which we’ve seen before) to which she was prescribed Valium. Being on a yacht under maritime law, Hannah needed to prove she had a prescription (which she did not) and declare it with the boat (which she did not.) Hannah also had a weed pen; however many have argued that it wasn’t the same as having weed and firing Hannah seemed a bit extreme. Hannah’s fans argued that Malia was a snitch and Captain Sandy should have given Hannah a warning as she had given previous employees warnings for smelling of alcohol while on watch.
While she didn’t address the alcohol incident, Sandy tried to silence her critics by saying that she has had charter guests with drugs in the past, but it wasn’t the same: “Sure, clients have had drugs and I’ve addressed that. I take it to the primary and go, ‘I don’t care -you can do drugs your whole life. It’s not my business. What you can’t do is have drugs on board and you need to remove them.'” Sandy continued by saying, “If my crew are doing drugs – big difference because we’re liable and that’s the bottom line. People smoke pot all over the world and people are prescribed Valium. Hannah didn’t check that in. Hannah can’t do Valium and have a job onboard – that’s not allowed because the minute you take that pill you are now my liability. You are no longer my asset and my crew are my asset in case we have an emergency.”
Sandy has been making the rounds and also recently appeared on Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef where she discussed chefs and why ‘good’ just doesn’t cut it in this industry. We all know the chef situation has been a hot mess this season with fan-favorite Kiko getting fired for serving fried food which was deemed to ‘kid-like’ only to be replaced by Tom which is a disaster. Many fans thought Kiko deserved another chance as even chef Mila (aka the worst chef of all time) seemed to get a pass for more than one meal. According to Sandy:
“We’re competing with that boat and that boat – we have to compete for clients. If you just wanted to be served food in a restaurant – go to a restaurant. This is a superyacht – it has to be visceral, it has to be a theme. You have to have white-glove service. There’s so many different types of service you want the client to experience at the table to be beyond anything they’ve ever experienced. That’s really what we have to do on a superyacht to justify the kind of money they spend and they do critique us. The charter clients go back to the charter broker and say ‘never book that crew again’ or ‘I think that crew is amazing.'”
I felt for Kiko and felt that he deserved another chance. He wasn’t familiar with Vegas and only did was Hannah instructed, plus many of his past meals were a hit. As for Hannah – I feel if Sandy gave a previous deckhand a warning about alcohol it seems inconsistent to have no tolerance with Hannah. I’m not a Captain of a Super Yacht so perhaps we will get more clarification at the reunion.
Below Deck airs Mondays on Bravo.
Do you think Captain Sandy was justified in firing Kiko and Hannah?
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