When you’re a guest on board a superyacht, it’s okay to be difficult — you or a dear friend is paying for the privilege — but please don’t tell the chef working below deck in a scorching, cramped galley: “I’m sorry, my dog eats food like this.”
Or, if you’ve been guzzling Champagne like it’s water, don’t ignore the captain’s orders and leap overboard without a life jacket. You could end up in jail.
But then you probably knew that if you were among the guests on the 207-foot superyacht “Satori,” docked at Navy Pier Marina last week — one of the largest private boats docked in the city in recent memory.
Oh, you weren’t?
In that case, you can pick up some yachting etiquette tips from two of America’s best-known celebrity superyacht captains: Sandy Yawn and Kerry Titheradge, both stars of the extremely popular Bravo “Below Deck” series and its numerous spinoffs.
Yawn and Titheradge will be entertaining fans of the show (and anyone else) during a three-hour City Cruises event leaving from Navy Pier on July 18.
You might learn about the stress of navigating a megayacht through the incredibly tight passage beneath the drawbridge entering Port de Gustavia at the Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy.
“It’s a bee’s d__k [on] either side,” said Titheradge, a native Australian.
You’ll learn, according to the event’s promotional material: “How to become the crew’s favorite guest without spending an extra dollar” and “the etiquette faux pas that instantly makes the crew members secretly dread certain guests.”
If you’re a regular “Below Deck” viewer, you probably know all of this. You’ll know too that the reality TV show is addictive and really more about the crew — who hates whom, who is sleeping (or hoping to sleep) with whom, etc. And there are cameras seemingly everywhere (except inside the captain’s cabin) capturing every gritty detail.
“You’ve got the drama of what we’re doing, we’re going to amazing locations. … You get to see the amazing food,” said Titheradge, who along with Yawn, chatted with the Sun-Times this week on a Zoom call. “Obviously there’s the romance.”
Romances. That’s worth exploring a bit more. There is more sex in a typical three-day “Below Deck” charter among the 20-something crew than most couples enjoy in a month.
Worst superyacht guests ever
Are the crew members (cast, not selected by the captain), given advice about contraception and STDs?
“They are adults. We’re not their parents. I hoped they learned that at home,” said Yawn, an American who has been in the maritime industry for more than 30 years.
That said, both Yawn and Titheradge find themselves soothing bruised egos or handing out hugs on the show, when a crewmember makes a rookie mistake or, for instance, a loved-one back home is taken seriously ill.
Viewers also get a bird’s-eye view of some of the worst guest behavior. Yawn said her all-time worst is the guest who said she wouldn’t feed Chef Adam Glick’s food to her dog.
“I will step in every time if they start insulting the crew,” Yawn said. “You are not here to abuse them or to tear their spirits down. If you don’t like the food, tell the captain.”
Titheradge recalled the time one inebriated female guest yelled obscenities and leaped into the water, ignoring his command not to do so.
“She was troubled, and I was just the outlet, the target. I looked at her like a wounded animal. She was lashing out. … I had to get the police to get her off the boat,” Titheradge said.
With so many guests coming across — at the very least — as self-important and boorish, why would they want to put themselves out there in that way?
“It’s an opportunity for people to market their product if you’re the primary [the person paying for the charter] because Bravo always replays the show,” Yawn said, adding, “On a real charter yacht, you charter for a week. No charter yacht that size charters for three days. It doesn’t happen. The show allows that. So it’s more affordable.”
Conversely, why would veteran captains want to put up with a bunch of feuding, sex-mad 20-somethings season after season?
That’s just the nature of the yachting world, Yawn said.
“No one is going to work like that in their 40s, 50s, 60s,” Yawn said.
Said Titheradge: “I get to see new places. I still have the travel bug. And I love the challenges of what the job provides. … Along the way, we get to mentor [the crew], teach them something that they can take with them to help them through life. That’s a gift in itself.”