Welcome to the Below Deck Mediterranean Season 9, Episode 9 recap! In this week’s episode, called “This Boat’s Not Big Enough For the Stew of Us,” Iain makes several errors that has Captain Sandy question his ability as a bosun. On the crew night out, Joe decides to get intimate with Elena, which doesn’t sit well with Bri. Things between Bri and Ellie become so out of control that Sandy has to step in. Here are some of the highlights from Below Deck Med Season 9, Episode 9.
“Look before you talk”
Getting ready to leave Hydra, Captain Sandy decides to release the stern lines and use the anchors to pull them away from the dock. When she gives the order to Iain to release the lines, he mistakenly tells her there’s “no one there” to do it, just like he did when they came in earlier.
“They just released the boat next to us, so they’ve gotta be there,” Sandy radios back.
When Sandy tells him to look again, he says, “Oh, I see him now. He was hiding.”
“Look before you talk [next time],” Sandy tells him.
Once they’re on their way, Gael tells Iain, “Call fenders for me when you’re ready.”
But Iain’s still stinging from his last encounter with the captain. “I just don’t want to do anything right now ‘cause I’ll get in trouble.”
“Not the right attitude,” Gael laughs. Seriously. He’s acting like a child.
Gael hits the nail on the head in a confessional: “I feel like with Iain, there’s a lack of accountability. He’s just constantly pointing the finger rather than putting it on himself and saying, ‘Maybe I could’ve handled this better.’”
Think before you speak on Below Deck Med
While docking in Athens, Iain tells Sandy she can “come astern.” Sandy radios back that she never goes astern [backs up the boat] “until all the lines are out of the water.” You don’t want to wrap a line around one of the boat’s propellers.
“He says things, and he doesn’t even look,” Sandy says, exasperated.
“When I move the vessel, make sure that your lines don’t touch the water,” she radios back. “Pull the starboard line out of the water, please.”
Iain tells her, “It’s not our lines, Cap. It’s the port’s lines.” Not true, as production highlights the starboard line which is clearly attached to the Mustique.
“That’s our line!” Gael yells.
Sandy commands, “Get the starboard line out of the water and keep it out of the water!”
“Oops,” Iain mutters.
“What’s so hard about this?” Sandy mutters. After the guests leave, Sandy calls Iain to the bridge.
“At this level on a superyacht, I expect more from the bosun,” Sandy interviews. “I just think that Iain’s head is somewhere else. Starting now, I’m not letting it slide.”
When Iain arrives, Sandy clarifies the docking procedure. “Don’t say something unless you have 100% confirmation,” she tells him. “I saw the line in the water … I don’t trust you 100%, so I want to get to that 100% trust.”
“To be honest, I think I’m doing all right,” Iain interviews. “But apparently, I’m wrong.” Totally, dude! I can think of at least three times you gave Sandy incorrect information because you spoke without thinking.
Sadly, Iain missed the whole point. He thinks Sandy is just trying to “push me to my limits to see how far she can push me. It hurt a little, but I’m just gonna keep smiling.” He didn’t hear a word.
A breakup and a hookup on Below Deck Med
During the crew night out, Gael’s boyfriend texts her that he wants to talk, but she says the crew’s at dinner. Can she talk to him later?
He throws a hissy fit and basically says this isn’t working, you never say you love me anymore. Finally, he just says they’re done.
She doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. She texts him every morning and every night before bed. She’s working, so it’s not like she can be on the phone with him all day. And she confesses to Nathan that she just can’t bring herself to tell him “I love you” anymore.
Though he’s sympathetic, Nathan sees this as his chance.
Meanwhile, Joe and Ellie flirt all through dinner, and once they get to the club, the sexual energy is off the charts. They’re dancing very close and making out on the dance floor, which isn’t going to help Ellie and Bri’s tenuous relationship.
“I’m not jealous,” Bri lies in a confessional. “If you want to hook up, hook up. Fine. It just gets annoying when you do it right in front of me. Don’t do that.”
On the way back to the boat, Joe and Ellie are making out in the back seat of the van. “Okay, guys,” Jono jokes. “Keep it PG-13.”
Too many hands in the laundry on Below Deck Med
There are still problems with the laundry. People are missing their clothing, but Bri can’t remember if she gave them back or if Ellie did. That’s why she writes everything down in her notebook, but with another person in the laundry room, things get confused.
“This is why there’s confusion in the laundry,” Bri says. “Because Ellie is there. All the blame can’t be put on me. Ellie has a part in this, and she needs to own that.”
When Nathan says he feels bad for Bri, Ellie says, “Can we just do what we’re paid to do without the meltdown? Is that too much to ask?” That’s cold. Ellie has no compassion for her co-worker, who’s obviously struggling.
“You’re ruthless!” Nathan laughs.
But then Jono comes out with someone else’s pants. They turn out to be Joe’s even though the tag says “Jono.” Ellie confesses that she wrote the name on the tag, cause she thought they were Jono’s. Ah ha! So Ellie’s not perfect either?
When the guests leave the boat with Aesha for a tour, Captain Sandy finds Bri crying in the crew mess. “What’s up?” she asks.
“I’ve just been feeling a little down,” Bri says. “I’ve been struggling quite a bit with Ellie.”
Sandy advises her to just get control of her emotions and be confident in herself. She says Bri has a choice as to how she responds to the circumstances she finds herself in.
“You can do this!” Sandy says.
Bri draws a line with Ellie
When Bri returns from break, Ellie is going on her break. Before she goes, she tells Bri all the things she needs to do. Also, she hasn’t gotten to the cabins yet. WTF has she been doing?
Bri’s frantically cleaning the cabins when Ellie comes to give her some final instructions. Bri is wound up and tells Ellie, “Just leave me alone. I’ve got cabins to do, so if you’re going to distract me, please just go. You can keep trying to walk all over me, but I’m not gonna take it anymore.”
But Ellie says, “No I’m not going to leave you alone. You don’t get to speak to me like this.”
“Just leave me alone,” Bri continues. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
“Bri, listen to me,” she sputters. “You do not get to speak to me like this. I am Second Stew!”
But Bri just keeps cleaning. Ellie tries to grab her arm. “Stop that! Stop working! You need to stop.”
But Bri just keeps working.
“You are out of control!” Ellie says. “Since you don’t know how boats work, Second Stew outranks you. So that is who I am!”
Ellie is beside herself. “I expect an apology when I come back,” she says. “If not, you’re going straight to Captain Sandy.”
Aesha gets Bri’s side of the story
Chef Jono runs into Bri coming up the stairs from the laundry, and she’s in tears. “Do you need to sit down for a minute?” he asks her.
“I can’t,” she hyperventilates. “Guests are coming, and I’m the only f*cking stew awake.”
Captain Sandy walks in and wonders what’s happening.
“I feel like Ellie’s just being so spiteful,” Bri sobs. “I can’t talk to you right now because it’s gonna make me cry, and the guests are coming.”
Bri asks Sandy if she can pass out the cold towels while she goes back and finishes pouring the prosecco. That’s what I like about Sandy. She’s a team player.
She jokes with the guests, “I have two jobs!”
When Aesha asks how things went while she was gone, Bri says, “Would you say that setting up lunch or cabins was a priority?”
“If cabins weren’t finished, then cabins,” Aesha responds.
Bri tells her boss that she came out after her break and Ellie had set the table but hadn’t done cabins. Bri explains how she kept telling Ellie to leave her alone so she could work, but she was telling her, “I’m the second stew. You can’t be talking to me like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Aesha says, giving Bri a hug. “No one should be speaking to you like that. If you went on your break, which is what I told you to do, she had more than enough time to finish cabins.”
Ellie gives her side on Below Deck Med
Aesha’s next stop is Captain Sandy. “Did you hear that?” she asks.
“No, but I caught Bri when you guys were coming in, and she was really upset,” Sandy says.
Aesha explains that Ellie didn’t do cabins when Bri was on break. “Apparently, Ellie pushed back really hard,” Aesha adds.
“The way Bri was emotionally walking out to the guests is not okay,” Sandy says. “There’s always three sides to a story … Find out facts, then decide.”
Aesha radios Ellie to meet her in the pantry. This should be interesting.
“So what happened when I was away?” she asks Ellie.
“Um, I was working the entire time,” Ellie responds, innocently.
“From my understanding, you didn’t do the cabins,” the chief stew says. “And then you made Bri feel like sh*t about the cabins not being finished. So I just want to know what happened.”
“I did not make her feel like sh*t,” Ellie answers. “I simply said I did not have the time to finish the cabins.”
“So why didn’t you finish the cabins before you set the table?” Aesha asks. “The cabins should always be finished first.”
Ellie didn’t have a good answer for that. “That is my bad,” she admitted. “But at this point, we are letting her get away with really bad behavior.”
“I don’t know that … because I’m not there,” Aesha replies.
“I got completely berated,” Ellie says, getting emotional. “This is what’s been going on. She’s going to other crew members, involving other people. I don’t think this can continue ’cause it keeps escalating.”
Sandy steps in
When Aesha sits down with Sandy again, she says, “Basically, everything that Bri said, Ellie has said the complete opposite … She’s shaking and she’s crying, and they’re both so convincing that I don’t know what the truth is.”
“Just leave it with me,” Sandy says. Next thing we know Sandy radios, “Bri and Ellie, meet me on the bridge.”
When the two hostile parties arrive, Sandy begins. “We’re here to do a job, and we have to have respect in the workplace,” she says. “If you two can’t work together, I can’t just let go [of] one. I have to let go [of] both. Because I don’t know the full story, and neither does Aesha … I’m here to make sure that you can fix it and continue to do your job. Can you guys do that?”
“I don’t think so,” Bri responds. “We’ve both tried, and it’s just impossible. Today, I felt like Ellie didn’t have my back ’cause when I came out from my break, she purposely didn’t do the cabins.”
“Why didn’t you do the cabins?” Sandy asks Ellie.
“Captain Sandy, she’s completely disrespected you, to be very honest,” Ellie says, changing the subject. “This is the attitude from Day One.”
“Stop, stop, stop,” Sandy intervenes. “Cause this will make me mad. Everyone here is replaceable. You’ll both be on the ferry going back.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
Below Deck Mediterranean airs Mondays at 9/8c on Bravo.
TELL US – WHAT DID YOU THINK OF BELOW DECK MEDITERRANEAN SEASON 9, EPISODE 9? WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON: ELLIE OR BRI?