Below Deck Leaders Impacting the Future of Yachting

Aug 1, 2024 by Gina Ragusa

Below Deck Leaders are trailblazing the future of yachting — through reality television. 

Bravo’s nautical reality seriesBelow Deck” didn’t inspire Second Officer Malia White to join the yachting industry, but being on the show certainly did. 

After graduating from college with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology, she settled into a landlocked desk job like many new grads. During a night of drunk social media surfing with friends, she stumbled across a casting call for “Below Deck.”

She joked about applying for fun after a lot of rosé and found herself on Season 2 of “Below Deck Mediterranean as a green deckhand. At the time, she didn’t necessarily want to join yachting, but merely wanted a taste of reality TV. 

Below Deck

What began as an opportunity to be on reality television changed the trajectory of White’s career, especially after being mentored by Capt. Sandy Yawn, who was also new to the franchise. 

“It definitely was after my first season when I was on the bridge with Capt. Sandy and she was like, ‘You know you could do this,’” White said, recalling the moment Yawn let her drive the superyacht. 

Working for Yawn prompted her to rethink a return to her old life in Denver, Colorado. However, after filming wrapped, White did what she thought she was supposed to do — she returned to her desk job and resumed her former life. 

“But I was like, ‘You know what, I could just take a chance before I get back to work, go back to the grind,’” White said. “I looked up everything I needed to do to get my 100-ton captain’s license with the Coast Guard. I flew to Florida, stayed with a friend, and did my Coast Guard ticket. From there I was like, okay, maybe I’ll just do dock work or try to get my first job.”

The rest is history. White applied the same gritty determination from the show to earning new tickets in the “real world” of yachting. “I just got my chief mate [ticket] a year and a half ago. And I’m starting to look at doing my master’s ticket,” she said, sharing that she has also found an ideal situation with her current boat that allows her time to earn additional certifications.

White says many new crewmembers she’s met joined yachting after watching “Below Deck.” 

I’ve had people work on my boat that are like, ‘I watched the show and I want to go try this.’ Sometimes those people are really good at their job, and sometimes those people are not great at the job and they’re just kind of doing it, like backpackers that just want to do it for a season,” White said.

Gabriela Barragán is another “Below Deck” crewmember who found the industry through the show.  

Below Deck

Barragán was a stew on “Below Deck Sailing Yacht” Season 3 and found her way into yachting after looking for a career change. She started watching the series in 2016 and after exploring different options in the maritime industry, she completed courses and joined a boat in 2020 — just as COVID-19 hit. Thankfully, she found a sailing yacht still running charters in July 2020 in New England. After starring on the show, she worked for “Below Deck” alum Wesley O’Dell in St. Thomas. Barragán looks forward to the summer season and is still working on sailing yachts. 

While the show may have helped some “Below Deck” crewmembers make yachting their career, other “Below Deck stars, like Yawn, have leveraged the series as a springboard to draw more people into this rapidly growing industry. 

Yawn launched a groundbreaking initiative to bring the business of yachting to millions of public school educators, parents, and students throughout the U.S.. The idea is to offer more options for students who aren’t interested in going to college or a trade school. 

“I founded Captain Sandy’s Charities in 2019 because I wanted to bring maritime education into public schools,” Yawn said. She pointed out that while schools may present a menu of career opportunities to students, sometimes there isn’t a fit for everyone. 

“Why not educate them and let them know there are job opportunities and careers in the marine industry,” she said. “We rolled out our first program in Florida across the high schools. And now this year we’re going to go into middle school. And then we’re going to expand it across the U.S. and across the globe.”

Yawn is especially excited about exposure in landlocked states, where the maritime industry is often not a consideration. 

Below Deck

“Even in middle America, they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, there are jobs in the industry!’ And this show put this on the air,” she said. “People see it and they go, how do I get into it? We need hard workers. We need people who are committed. So that’s how the idea was born.”

The program, Adventures and Learning in Marine Careers, made possible by Captain Sandy’s Charities, offers a complete teaching kit, and a series of educational YouTube videos and interactive materials to help educators introduce yachting careers to students. The material, which includes fun quizzes and handouts, prompt engagement. The digital quiz includes Yawn’s voice gently reminding the quiz taker to “try again” when they get a wrong answer. A correct quiz answer is met with a resounding celebratory horn. 

Beyond the positions seen on “Below Deck,” Yawn’s program also aims to raise awareness that joining the maritime industry doesn’t necessarily mean a life at sea. 

“If you don’t want to travel and work at sea, you can actually get jobs on land. Carpentry, plumbing, electrician in shipyards and repair yards. You could be a yacht broker, charter broker, sales broker — those are all opportunities,” she said. “So really, [the program is] to educate them. Instead of saying, I could go to college, become a doctor or whatever they’re choosing, they could say, I’m not college material or I’m college bound. My parents don’t have the money, I don’t have the scholarships — this is a business that has the same benefits of all those other jobs and the starting salaries are bigger.”

Hannah Ferrier and Anastasia Surmava, also “Below Deck” alums, opened Ocean Training International Academy in Australia after endless fan inquiries about the industry.

Ferrier was a longtime “Below Deck Med” chief stew, while Survama juggled two roles as a third stew and chef on Season 4 of the show. They are fully aware of “Below Deck’s” reputation in the industry, but believe tides are turning. 

“I think there will always be the salty old timers that will continue to roll their eyes about “Below Deck,” but I also think it has done amazing things for the industry,” Ferrier said. “On a personal level, to watch my students go from working at a Starbucks in their local landlocked town to video calling them on a yacht in the Caribbean is such an amazing feeling. I am a big believer in traveling and exploring the world when you are young. Your twenties are for making mistakes and growing as a person and nothing will ensure you make more mistakes or give you the growth yachting does.”

Below Deck

Ferrier and Survama estimate that approximately 80% of their students enrolled due to the Bravo reality series. 

“‘Below Deck’ has had a massive impact on the yachting industry,” Ferrier said. “When I joined the yachting industry, social media consisted of posting a few grainy photos to Facebook once every few months and the yachting industry always sat under a cloud of mystery. Yachties were forced to sign NDAs and no one ever got to see what happened above or below deck on superyachts. Since ‘Below Deck’ has blown up into the phenomenon it is today, the industry has been flooded with hopefuls looking to enter the industry. I also think social media has had a big impact on the industry with more people learning about the industry through TikTok and Instagram.”  

So has “Below Deck” made waves and created growth in the maritime industry? While attributing growth directly to the show is impossible, crew and industry expert Norma Trease, also often referenced on the series, explains several factors come into play in terms of crew growth. 

We’re probably looking right now at about 55,000 crew worldwide that are paid to work on yachts, some of them more part time than others,” Trease estimates, also mentioning a 30% increase in crew over the last 20 years. “I don’t think that ‘Below Deck’ has actually increased the number of crew, per se. The reality is that as the number of professionally crewed yachts has grown, the number of crew has grown. That’s a mathematical, sensible increase in the amount of crew because it’s the amount of crew that are needed.” 

Anastasia Surmava by Hubert Haciski on the cover. 

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