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Captain Sandy Yawn has faced some challenges in her years on Bravo’s Below Deck Mediterranean. But season after season, she’s proven that she has what it takes to succeed as the rare female captain in the luxury yacht industry. Yet even given all her experience, she’s grateful she’s not dealing with the drama that’s on Captain Kerry Titheradge’s plate on the current season of Below Deck. 

‘Below Deck’ Season 12 brings the drama 

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The latest season of Below Deck finds Captain Kerry and his crew in the glamorous Caribbean, where they’re serving high-maintenance charter guests on the islands of Anguilla, St. Barths, and St. Maarten. But there’s trouble in paradise due to tense dynamics and tangled love triangles. 

Chef Lawrence Snowden struggled to adjust to life in the galley and bowed out early in the season, leading to a last-minute scramble to find a replacement. A challenging five-day charter left everyone disappointed when a skimpy tip didn’t reflect the crew’s hard work. And Boson Caio Poltronieri got the boot after repeatedly failing to rise to the occasion. (Among his hard-to-forgive errors? Leaving the guests’ luggage on the dock.) 

Yawn is sympathetic to Titheradge’s struggles. But the buck stops with him, she said on the latest episode of the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast with David Yontef. 

“Listen, I love Kerry,” she said. “But the ultimate responsibility, it’s on him. You know what I mean? So you can say it’s the crew’s fault. But the reality is, is like, you’ve got to make sure you got the luggage on board.”

And then there’s the Simpson Bay Bridge. Entering the harbor at St. Maarten requires navigating through a narrow gateway that’s been the site of multiple accidents. Captain Kerry has had to go through it multiple times this season.

“I’m glad I’m not in his shoes in and out of that bridge,” Yawn said. 

“The fact that he had to deal with that bridge so much, that’s very stressful,” she added. “And then where he had to dock is also very challenging. He has a lot of stress. I would have refused to go through that bridge 18 times.”

Captain Sandy Yawn wants to educate people about maritime careers 

A career in the maritime industry can be stressful, as anyone who’s binge-watched Below Deck knows. But it can also be very rewarding. While the reality series has drawn more attention to the variety of jobs available in the field, it’s still a relatively unknown career path to many. Yawn wants to change that. 

Through her non-profit, Captain Sandy’s Charities, she’s working to inspire and educate a new generation of maritime leaders and environmental stewards. 

“It’s a fully accredited education program to kind of introduce children in schools to the maritime industry,” she explained. The organization has already developed a curriculum for middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, “Steering Toward Success,” that’s approved by the state of Florida. A curriculum for elementary school students is also in the works. Now, she wants to take things national.

“Our next our next place to go is into every school across the country and globally, because this program, it’s a STEM education,” she explained. ‘So it teaches kids about the maritime industry … it’s been very successful.”

Yawn’s hope is that more people will begin to consider a career in the maritime industry. 

“We are doing this to change, to open up the world to even middle America and people who are not surrounded by water who are actually hard workers and want to get out there and adventure,” she said.  

Below Deck Season 12 airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.

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