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Bayesian superyacht sinking: Horror of those trapped in bedrooms described by former captain

Italian prosecutors continue their investigation after divers recovered video equipment from the luxury yacht, article bookmarked.

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A former captain of the Bayesian has described the terrifying obstacles facing those trapped in the cabins as the Bayesian superyacht overturned killing seven.

Stephen Edwards, who captained the Bayesian for five years until 2020, told The Telegraph : “Those who stayed curled up in bed were in the worst situation.

“The storm hit hard, placing them in the melee of flying furniture, glass and other items,” he said adding he had spoken to traumatised crew members.

“Inside the cabins, the only way to think of this is that people were lying in their beds one minute, and the next the room was on its side, totally dark, with the door now either in the floor or in the ceiling above.”

It came as divers race to retrieve Mike Lynch’s personal hard drives locked in a safe on the ocean floor, according to reports.

Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported that the tech billionaire, whose clients included MI5, the NSA and the Israeli secret service, didn’t trust confidential documents on the cloud and kept two encrypted hard drives in a safe which now lies 49 metres below sea level.

Former captain says surviving crewmembers all have PTSD from sinking

The former captain of the Bayesian superyacht says he has spoken to all of the surviving crew to hear their account of the sinking.

Stephen Edwards said all the crew members who were on deck rescued as many passengers as they could but that heading down towards the flooded lower parts of the yacht “would have meant certain death”.

The former captain told The Telegraph: “They are not doing very well”

“The dominant feeling is still one of shock from the event. They are dealing with what happened, how it happened and how quickly it happened.”

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Bayesian yacht sinking: Banking boss among four victims who ‘suffocated in cabin air bubble’

Four of the victims of last month’s Bayesian yacht disaster died after oxygen ran out in an air bubble on the sunken vessel, it has been reported.

Autopsies over the past few days on four of those who died have revealed an absence of water in their lungs, suggesting they suffocated as the air became saturated with carbon dioxide, Italian publication La Repubblica said.

The outlet reported post-mortems showed four people died from “atypical drowning”, with “no water in their lungs, trachea and stomach”. There were no signs of external injuries.

HP looking to recoup £4billion from Mike Lynch’s estate despite Bayesian tragedy

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is making the “difficult decision” to pursue Mike Lynch’s estate for £4billion in the interests of shareholders despite the tech billionaire being killed along with his daughter on the Bayesian superyacht.

Antonio Neri, the former engineer turned chief executive at HPE, told the Financial Times : “Obviously my job as a representative of shareholders is to make the difficult decisions.

“These are difficult decisions. But in the end, we are making decisions in the best interest of shareholders.”

Mike Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal from criminal charges on the superyacht when it overturned in a freak storm.

But HPE intends to pursue damages around an earlier UK civil trial in 2022 which found in favor of HPE’s claim that Lynch and ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain had inflated the apparent value of Autonomy during the acquisition.

Seven people lost their lives in the sinking of a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily

Bayesian captain said to be ‘living darkest days of his life'

Three crew members including the yacht’s captain are under investigation, with plans being discussed to raise the yacht from the ocean bed to assist enquiries.

Sources close to New Zealander James Cutfield, 51, the captain , told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that he is living through the darkest days of his life.

Among those killed were Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who had been due to begin studying at Oxford University in September, the yacht’s chef and four other family friends and associates.

Captain James Cutfield of the Bayesian

Seven key unanswered questions around the sinking of the Bayesian

With the Bayesian lying on her side 50 metres underneath the now gentle waters of the Mediterranean, mystery still surrounds how the 56-metre superyacht, sank in the typhoon off the port of Porticello.

Remotely controlled underwater vehicles and cave divers are looking to raise the yacht .

Will answers to the sinking will rise to the surface with it?

yacht crew horror stories reddit

The key unanswered questions around the tragic sinking of the Bayesian

With the search continuing of the sunken Bayesian an investigation has been launched to establish what caused the disaster off the coast of Sicily

Mike Lynch’s co-defendant died from head injury after being hit by car days before yacht sinking

Mike Lynch ’s co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain died in hospital three days after being hit by a car on a country road, an inquest heard.

The 52-year-old, from Longstanton in south Cambridgeshire, was struck by a blue Vauxhall Corsa travelling between Stretham and Wicken on the A1123 at about 10.10am on 17 August.

Mr Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Mike Lynch’s software firm Autonomy, had been out running at the time, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg said.

Coroner Caroline Jones told the inquest in Alconbury that his medical cause of death was recorded as “traumatic head injury”.

Stephen Chamberlain who was hit by a car while out running, and died in hospital three days later (Cambridgeshire Police/ PA)

Mike Lynch ‘likely died of suffocation’ after running out of oxygen on sunken yacht

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is likely to have died of suffocation after running out of oxygen, according to a source close to the investigation.

They cited initial examinations carried out on Saturday after the businessman’s body was recovered from the family yacht that sank off Sicily ’s coast last month during a freak weather incident.

Mr Lynch died alongside his 18-year-old daughter, the boat’s chef and four others , who were onboard the British-flagged superyacht Bayesian to celebrate his recent acquittal after a lengthy decade-long legal battle.

Initial results of examinations of Hannah Lynch’s body on Saturday were inconclusive, the source told the Reuters news agency.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Mike Lynch’s yacht was ‘unsinkable’, says boss of company who built boat

Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, said there are no flaws with the design and construction of the Bayesian and it is “one of the safest boats in the world”.

The Bayesian, a 184-ft superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a freak tornado struck.

“The ship sank because it took on water, from where investigators will have to say,” Mr Costantino told television news programme TG1.

He suggested that the sinking was down to a series of human errors.

The CEO said that had the crew shut all doors and hatches, turned on the engine, lifted the anchor, lowered the keel and turned the yacht to face the wind, they would have suffered “zero damage”.

He added that data showed it took 16 minutes from when the wind began for it to sink.

Cartoisio said the tragedy will be even more painful if the sinking was caused by “behaviours that were not aligned to the responsibilities that everyone needs to take in shipping”.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

£4billion deal to purchase Mike Lynch’s Darktrace

Darktrace shares are set to stop trading publicly at the end of September, after the company set a timetable for its blockbuster private equity takeover to be completed.

The private equity group Thoma Bravo struck an almost 5.31 billion dollar (£4.3 billion) deal to buy Darktrace in April.

It marks one of the biggest take-private deals for a London-listed company in recent years, and will see Darktrace leave the FTSE 100 on October 1.

Founded in 2013, Cambridge-based Darktrace is a cybersecurity firm best known for using artificial intelligence to scan for hacks and data leaks inside IT networks.

A prominent company in the UK tech landscape, it was among the firms represented at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November, where world leaders and major tech firms met to discuss the potential threat of artificial intelligence.

The update comes after Poppy Gustafsson stepped down as chief executive earlier in September amid the takeover.

Ms Gustafsson, who co-founded the business in 2013, will be replaced as chief executive by Jill Popelka, the company said.

Ms Gustafsson helped to set up the Cambridge-based company in 2013 alongside Autonomy founder Mike Lynch.

Mr Lynch, and his daughter Hannah, were among seven people to die after the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.

Professor fears more deaths by ‘medicanes’ after Bayesian tragedy

Professor Yoav Yair, Dean of the School of Sustainability at Reichman University in Israel, told the Mirror that storms dubbed ‘medicanes’ - Mediterranean hurricanes - could cause similar sinkings like the Bayesian superyacht.

He said: “It is not a matter of if this (the Bayesian disaster) will happen again, but rather it’s when and where.

“In the last couple of years we have seen medicanes - which are a new phenomena. These are hurricane-like storms that pack a lot of energy, and create flash flooding, torrential rains, lightning, hail and severe sustained winds. The 2023 “Daniel” medicane destroyed Libya and caused over 30,000 deaths there.

“The sea surface temperature has risen globally and in the Med as well, charging the atmosphere with increased fluxes of water vapor, which means a higher potential for massive storms.”

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Jon Rahm’s refusal to pay back $300 million holding up PGA Tour-LIV Golf talks

Justin bieber 'disturbed' by scathing diddy allegations, warmington: woman accused of stealing porsche, running over owner in mississauga, first maple leafs camp practice under craig berube gets intense early with plenty of contact, rogers buys out bell in $4.7-billion takeover of mlse.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

YACHT HORROR: How did billionaire's 'unsinkable' boat end up on sea bottom?

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YACHT HORROR: How did billionaire's 'unsinkable' boat end up on sea bottom? Back to video

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch’s cage was gilded to be sure but a cage nonetheless.

And when he was cleared, Lynch took pals for a Mediterranean cruise on his super yacht, the Bayesian, which he was mulling selling. That will never happen.

On Monday morning, the Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily killing Lynch, his daughter Hannah, 18, two couples and the yacht’s Canadian chef.

Now, investigators are trying to determine how — and why — the “unsinkable” 184-foot yacht sank 160 feet to the bottom of the sea. The yacht’s captain may be the only person who has the answers.

Here is the latest:

— Lynch’s daughter Hannah, 18, is still missing after five bodies were found in the wreck;

— His wife revealed she was awoken by a “tilt” as the yacht went down;

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— Experts believe the yacht’s “tallest mast in the world” may have contributed to the tragedy after a freak “Black Swan” weather event;

— Frantic text messages from survivors who piled into a tiny raft revealed the chaos.

For two hours following the disaster, police questioned Kiwi captain James Cutfield, 51.

One major question is why the Bayesian sank so quickly.

“Every time a vessel sinks, there is never just one reason,” shipwreck researcher Bertrand Scibo told The UK Sun . “It could be that the keel was also inside or outside, because they can remove the keel [sic].”

He added: [There would be] no reason to remove the keel because they do that only when they go into harbour. Only the captain will be able to answer this special question.”

So far, five bodies — including Lynch’s — have been recovered with six being confirmed dead. There were 15 survivors.

Scibo was also concerned regarding the slow trickle of information and answers being released by officials. He said “all the information seems to be a bit secret.”

The CEO of the company that manufactured the yacht, Giovanni Costantino, claimed his boats are “unsinkable” and the “safest ever.” Instead, he told Italian TV that “human error” was to blame.

As the horror unfolded in Porticello Harbour on Monday morning, witnesses in a smaller boat claimed the mast was hammered by a waterspout causing the boat to capsize — and then vanish beneath the waves.

A British lawyer specializing in maritime law told the Daily Mail that officials will likely target the crew for answers.

“They will want to find out if the captain was at fault over anything,” lawyer Stephen Askins said. “If I was looking at this I’d be very interested in the weather report, what the captain was briefing the crew and what the captain was briefing the owner.”

He added: “It’s a case of looking at what happened and then asking yourself whether in all the circumstances what he did was reasonable.”

Shipwreck researcher Scibo said open windows and portholes could also be a recipe for disaster with the water flooding in “very quickly,” expediting the yacht’s demise.

“If you’ve got a combination of all these reasons, the keel, the mast, the portal, the windows and this very big tornado,” he said. “You find the reason of the sinking.”

The child of Irish immigrants, Lynch won a scholarship to a posh private school and then attended Cambridge.

Only two months ago he won a shocking landmark victory in the U.S. courts. Tech giant Hewlett Packard claimed Lynch artificially inflated the value of his software firm, Autonomy.

He had sold Autonomy to HP for a whopping $11.7 billion in 2011.

Prosecutors had accused Lynch, along with Autonomy’s finance executive Stephen Chamberlain — who died in a tragic car crash Saturday — padded Autonomy’s bottom line.

After being cleared, Lynch told The Times of London that he had feared dying in prison.

″If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense,” Lynch told the newspaper. “It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life — the question is, what do you want to do with it?”

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These charter guests came straight from hell

yacht crew horror stories reddit

For this year’s Halloween special, we thought we’d try and shock some of you into submission. This is an extract from the diary of a Superyacht Stewardess onboard a large Motor Yacht… Read on, if you dare!

Armed with radios and our biggest smiles, we waved off the Captain as he went to collect the guests for our New Year’s BVI charter. It was number five of ten-week-long, back-to-back charters. Exhausted but exhilarated from the high of an amazing Christmas trip, we were fueled by adrenaline, ready to embrace our new guests.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

The week began with the wild children fighting with black Sharpies… on our white leather sofas. Without jumping to conclusions too much, it was clear that parenting skills were questionable in this case. “Seven more days…” I said in my head as I walked by, smiling sweetly.

Day two: The nanny was sunbathing on the bow, the parents were asleep, and the kids were roaming free. The two-year-old decided to start climbing the steps, clearly in the “danger zone” that had been laid out on day one. Smack! Luckily her fall came only from the third step, and she was uninjured, but somehow this still didn’t prompt the nanny to reconsider the role of actually doing her job.

Day three: We were all puzzled as to why this group had chosen a yachting holiday as none of them seemed to be remotely interested in the water. On day 3 there was a thunderous crash and as we ran around the boat to see what was going on we noticed two heads bobbing about down below. One seemed pleased with the surroundings while the other certainly did not. The man had decided to take the seven-year-old boy for a swim and this has been met with a very loud protest indeed. After much wailing and shrieking a towel was demanded and dutifully provided. Having removed the salt from his eyes the boy promptly dropped the towel in the sea and scrambled out of the water to safety. The man went swimming alone after that.

Day four: The parents went out to dinner, and the nanny to bed, leaving the kids unattended (what a surprise). Dealing with the shrieking children was painful enough but then the parents returned from the restaurant and proudly showed off the goodies they had picked up whilst off the boat. Stolen goodies. Wine glasses, pens, silverware, linen napkins… In the crew mess, we wondered what they were planning to remove from the boat if this enormous haul was the result of only one night in a restaurant.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Day five, New Year’s Eve: Anchored at the best spot at Foxy’s, Jost Van Dyke, we were awakened at 5am by screaming children. I lay in bed, thinking surely the parents or nanny would do something. After twenty minutes of the screeching, I gave in and went to see what was going on. The brats had managed to open the porthole and had thrown out the boat’s Apple TV remotes. I put them in “time out”, had a stern word, and shut the door behind me. By now, the crew needed sleep and screaming children were not our responsibility.

By midday, the parents rolled out of bed and the woman’s hair was the brightest shade of blue hair you’ve ever seen. Was this real? We all radioed each other to confirm it wasn’t our delirium… Our fears were confirmed upon entering the master bathroom. Blue. Dye. EVERYWHERE. The white marble counters, walls, and the pristine white sink were splattered with blue dye.

The final day: Drained but still smiling because FINALLY these people are getting the hell off our boat. It all becomes worth it at the end of the week knowing the captain will be handed an envelope & the guests will become a story that one day we will be able to laugh about. Of course, that’s not what happened on this trip. The ‘envelope’ was handed to me. Only the envelope was actually a plastic bag. I looked inside to find a dress belonging to the lady that I’d complimented earlier in the week. That was my tip. The captain got a pair of size 14 Havaianas, but the best was our deckhand, an XL shirt for a petite guy. The receipt in the bag meant he could exchange the size… in theory. Off he went to greet a horrified shop owner, mumbling “Sir, this wasn’t paid for, we’re going to have to take it back from you. Sorry.”

It didn’t end there. The next day, preparing for the next imminent charter, we were all mortified to find that the entire supply of Bvlgari toiletries had vanished and so had the $300 Ralph Lauren scatter pillows from the master cabin, conveniently the same shade of blue as the lady’s new hairdo.

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Lauren Loudon

Related articles, champagne vs prosecco: what sets them apart, doing table service right. 12 top tips, the special skill you have to have if you’re going to be a yacht chef, 5 management tips for senior yacht crew.

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yacht crew horror stories reddit

Finally, Bravo Drops Below Deck Sailing Yacht's Season 5 Trailer

Bravo fans have been waiting a very long time for news about Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 5, and the network has finally delivered.

Not only did Bravo just drop a brand-new trailer for the fifth season of the hotly-anticipated reality TV show, the network also confirmed precisely when Below Deck Sailing Yacht will return.

Until today, fans of Below Deck Sailing Yacht weren't quite sure the spin-off of Below Deck would return for a fifth season, as the last episode of Season 4 aired way back in July 2023.

Editor's note: This article contains brief mentions of sexual assault, abuse, or other related topics that could be triggering for some readers and survivors. If you or someone you know is in need of assistance, please visit RAINN.org. The National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) is available 24/7.

In late June, one viewer asked Reddit users if Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 5 was ever going to happen, and even as recently as this summer, fans weren't sure the show was returning.

In that thread, BDSY fans speculated that Season 5 was delayed due to allegations involving First Officer Gary King.

As we previously reported, Season 4 of Below Deck Sailing Yacht featured a wild "love triangle" between Gary, Chief Stewardess Daisy Kelliher , and Chief Engineer Colin MacRae:

"Many things influenced the relationship between Daisy and Colin, but one name was the most prominent: Gary King. "Daisy, Colin, and Gary's entanglement reached a boiling point that got the three in public arguments and name-calling, and at the end, estranged."

A month after Season 4 concluded with a two-part reunion in July 2023, Rolling Stone published an in-depth article , "'Below Deck' Accused of Covering Up Gary King’s Sexual Misconduct," rocking the show's audience.

It reported in part:

"Bravos Below Deck was recently lauded for its handling of sexual misconduct when a producer on Below Deck Down Under broke the 'fourth wall' and intervened when one cast member, Luke Jones, tried to get into bed naked with another cast member, Margot Sisson, without her consent while she was inebriated and passed out. Not only was Luke fired from the show, but their fellow cast member and stewardess, Laura Bileskalne, was also let go because of victim-blaming comments she made to Margot about the incident and her own line-crossing pursuit of deckhand Adam Kodra. [...] "Samantha Suarez, who first joined Below Deck in the makeup department on Season 10 of the show, tells Rolling Stone that cast member Gary King tried to force himself on her during production of Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season Four, which filmed in Sardinia, Italy, in the summer of 2022."

Fans speculated that Season 5 was delayed due to extensive retooling, but Bravo eventually confirmed the return of Below Deck Sailing Yacht, with a trailer that centers Daisy.

Below Deck Viewers Ranked Their Favorite Captain And It's Not Who You Think

Below Deck know which Captains from the franchise are their favorites and which ones they want to go away.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 5's Release Date And Trailer

On September 16, Bravo finally released the Below Deck Sailing Yacht trailer.

Bravo shared the clip on Instagram and Twitter/X, to the surprise of fans:

Posts teased the crew's visit to the notoriously riotous destination of Ibiza, and the trailer kicked off with some remarks from Daisy.

Daisy is the first crew member to speak in the trailer, and she addresses the unwieldy love triangle of Season 4:

"Going into this season, I got rid of some dead weight. The breakup did a number on me last year. I felt very broken. "But now, I'm coming back in more focused, full of energy, and I'm f*****g good at my job. And I'm taking back the reins."

Immediately thereafter, the clip cuts to a cabin, where Daisy tells an in-bed Gary that she refuses to "carry this season," before cutting back to newer footage of Daisy laughing and predicting:

This is gonna be a s*** show.

Then the video shifts to Ibiza, where a voiceover describes it as the world's "party capital," and scenes are interspersed with a lot of breaking glass.

Gary (who has not been let go from the franchise) makes an appearance, and the soundbite chosen for the trailer is bizarre given the allegations levied at him last year:

If the guests don't have a good time, we're clearly doing something very wrong.

As the trailer winds down, one of the crew members (likely Deckhand Keith Allen) muses that "Daisy would make a very good wife."

The trailer wraps with an apparent firing, as well as what appears to be a scene during which the crew veers uncomfortable close to another vessel at sea, at night.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 5 debuts on Bravo on October 7 at 9PM Eastern, and streams on Peacock the following day.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht

Release Date February 3, 2020

Main Genre Reality-TV

Genres Reality-TV

Cast Daisy Kelliher, Colin Macrae, Gary King, Glenn Shephard

Rating TV-14

Network Bravo

Franchise(s) Below Deck

Showrunner Rebecca Taylor Henning, Doug Henning, Mark Cronin

Finally, Bravo Drops Below Deck Sailing Yacht's Season 5 Trailer

25 Ship Crewmen On The Scariest Experience They’ve Had Out In The Ocean

  • https://thoughtcatalog.com/?p=725306

If you’re already scared of the ocean, you probably shouldn’t read these disturbing stories from Ask Reddit.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

1. A dead officer was stuffed inside of the freezer

“We had a Naval Chief Petty Officer die of a Heart Attack while Underway onboard our Sub. Since we were doing spec ops off the USSR coastline, we could not surface and come off station for 60 days. So, every time we had to go into the freezer to get food. There was the Chief laying on the shelf with his eyes wide open and frozen. He was wrapped in a cling wrap material so you could see his face clearly. So, next time you open your freezer at night. Just think of having to look at someone’s face looking back at you.” — Fogliar

2. The entire crew drowned in the night

“My dad told me this story once. He spent a year fishing off the coast of Alaska. One night he and another boat were racing to get the last slip, the other would have to moor in the harbor for the night. That night there was a storm and the fish in the bottom of the boat moored in the harbor all slid to one side and capsized the boat. My dad woke up the next morning to find the entire boat’s crew had drowned in their sleep.” — 26raisans

3. We came across two men that had been shot to death

“Worked for a bit as a deckhand on fishing boats out of San Diego. A few times we would come across deserted smaller boats (pangas) drifting with outlandishly big motors. Every time the Captain would just cut hard port or starboard to get away from them a quick as possible – I knew they were drug running boats that had probably dropped off their cargo, but I would check them out with the binoculars if we were close. One had two people on it – both had clearly been shot a bunch of times, and one was moving and fairly alive. I told the Captain – got a disapproving head shake and we were on our way.” — confusedbossman

4. A colleague of mine hung himself

“I’ve spent about 9 years out at sea and there were a couple of things that stuck with me. The very worst was a colleague hanging himself overboard on purpose. Going next to a tornado off the coast of Taiwan and the massive waves around us. Hearing a PA from the captain to pick up a heavy tool and head on to the back of the ship next to the handrail and it was not a drill. Turned out a ship that went past us in the opposite direction change direction and started following us. Nothing came out of it…” — h2man

5. My friend may or may not have faked his own death

“US Marine here, during a float on a boat to Operation: Top Secret, Destination: Unknown, one of our own were lost at sea. I guess they just jumped overboard at night or something. Kinda depressing, that’s a shitty way to die. Anyways, their coffin rack was adjacent to mine, and we left the rack made, and for some reason, the sheets kept on getting messed up every day. It was pain in the ass to keep making the sheets we stripped the rack. And we figured that no one should be sleeping in there since there were plenty of other vacant racks in the berthing. But someone would keep making the rack, and messing the sheets up in the morning. I know aircraft carriers are big, but could someone really fake their own death on one and get away with it? There’s no way someone would be sleeping there, because we’d notice someone climbing up on the top bunk, and the duty would have been posted at the entrances to the berthing. It was just creepy seeing the rack being made neatly and then messed up in the morning.” — KungFuDabu

6. Two stowaways suffered from a brutal death

“Two stowaways decided that it would be a good idea to crawl up the anchor chain of our panamax tanker (to give you an idea, each link weighs 365 pounds) and hide in the anchor chain locker. We relocated on order of port authorities and re-dropped anchor. ‘Dropping anchor’ is basically that, you just let gravity do it’s thing (with a bit of braking). Next thing we know is that red mush is coming out of the hawsehole. Basically those guys were stuck in a room where 365-pound pieces of steel are thrown everywhere. Had to send a few filipinos down into the anchor locker with a power washer to clean out the rest.” — Kingfisher_ybw

7. A man died from fumes while cleaning a cargo tank

“Not me but my chief engineer always recalls a story of when a AB died while cleaning a cargo tank due to the fumes, he said having lunch with him a few minutes prior to everyone running out on deck to see what the emergency was to only make it there as his lifeless body was dragged out the manhole was the eeriest feeling ever. They were well offshore as well so their only option was to store his body in one of the walk-in coolers. They just wrapped his body in a bed sheet and plopped him down on the floor of it no different then if he were the rack of ribeyes they had thawing out. Made getting your milk in the morning for your cereal very difficult.” — skorfab

8. Some poor soul jumped ship and disappeared into the Atlantic

“We were heading off at night during the winter gales and about 5 hours offshore around midnight I finished my shift and headed off to a crafty little platform at the stern where I could toke my nightly reefer in peace and I saw the massive bright ships spotlights scanning slowly and methodically back and forth across the waves. I guessed this was for a jumper and sitting there slightly baked I could imagine perhaps glimpsing a last sight of some poor doomed soul struggling in the chop and wake before disappearing off into the vast black expanse of the Atlantic. An office later confirmed the spotlights that night were for someone who had apparently jumped off a ship that had passed in the opposite direction.” — Vulture1980

9. We found a man that was only half alive

“Found a wrecked up yacht off the coast of Bermuda with one dead man and one half drunk and injured man. We thought no one was alive until the one guy screeched at us.” — blackbutters

10. I saw a skull floating in the water

“Me and two friends go down and rent a boat on Lake Okeechobee in Florida. We get a ~30 foot pontoon boat that has a cover although there’s no cabin or anything under the main deck. It’s winter in South Florida so it’s cool but not cold, thus we decide to just sleep on the boat instead of setting up a camp. We plan on spending 3 days and 2 nights on the lake. We spend our time drinking, fishing, and playing games. It’s sometime on the second night when I just wake up. I’m still drunk from our previous activities, but my senses are on overdrive and I just feel aware of something. I was sleeping towards the back of the boat while my friends are at the front. It’s eerily calm with no waves in the water. We were about ~250 feet from shore with land on our port side. I started scanning the treeline looking for… something. Nothing on land, so I scan the water on the port side. Nothing. So I scan the water aft of the boat. Nothing. I didn’t want to disturb my friends up front so I scan the water on the starboard side. That’s when I saw it. A skull floating in the water with just the eye sockets and part of the nasal cavity sitting there in the water looking right at me about 50 feet away. An immediate sense of dread took me. It was the most scared I’d ever been in my life. Then an even worse feeling took over — calmness and the sudden urge to jump in the water. I had the notion that I would be at home and at peace if I just jumped into the water. Before I could act on it, I think one of my friends stirred in their sleep because I heard a beer bottle start rolling near the front of the boat. This snapped me out of it and the feeling of dread returned. I yelled at them to get up while I moved to start the engines. One doesn’t respond at all while the other drunkingly tells me to fuck off. I yell again that I’m not fucking around and nothing. I’m about to pull the starter on the engine/yell again at my friends when I hear something. I freeze and listen closely…a very faint splashing sound that is slowly getting closer. I forget about yelling at my friends and focus on starting the engine. I pull and pull and pull on the started and nothing. In between the pulls, I hear the splashing getting closer but I don’t dare look at the direction of the noise. Finally, the engine starts and I punch it out of there. I must have gone 30 miles before I came to a stop to conserve fuel. Until the sun rose and my friends woke up, I spent the rest of the night scanning the waters just in case. I had to make up a bullshit excuse to explain to my friends why we were so far away from our previous spot. I wanted to tell them, but I doubt they would believe me. When I got home I did some research and apparently native American tribes possibly used the lake as a burial ground plus there are thought to be the bodies of many victims of hurricanes throughout the decades laying in the lake. Fishermen have found many human bones over the years. This was over six years ago and I have yet to set foot near any body of water larger than my shower. No lakes, oceans, rivers, water parks, pools, hot tubs, nothing. I don’t blame you if you don’t believe some random guy on the internet. Many times I tried to write it off as my drunk self seeing things. However, I can’t write off the feeling of wanting to jump into the water with something, real or not, that struck me with terror just a moment ago. Thinking about that feeling of wanting to go into the water with whatever was out there chills me to this day.” — Lake_Throwaway

11. We discovered an empty life raft

“Came upon an empty life raft in the middle of the Atlantic. In all likelihood it was probably an ‘accidental discharge.’ Maybe a crew member was fucking around with the release or something, who knows. The implications otherwise are very disturbing though. Did a ship go down with all hands without anyone making it to the raft? Was the raft abandoned for some reason? It left me feeling vaguely disturbed for a while afterwards.” — Coastie071

12. The doldrums slowly drove us insane

“The doldrums. You spend a year or two at sea watching the waves and winds are blowing constantly and then one day they stop. Not so much as a whisper of wind and the sea is like glass. It feels as if time has stopped. Realizing how creepy it feels, the captain calls for an all stop and goes dead in the water. Like a horror movie, everyone migrates topside and just stares to the horizon. No one says a word and you can hear yourself breathe. He lets the ship rest there for an hour and the sailors freak out. Panic can set in quickly with a green crew. The only thing the captain says when we get underway is: ‘Men, this is the doldrums.’ Bastard knew what he was doing…” — huskola

13. We found bodies covered in black oil

“Out at sea, when emergencies happen it doesn’t matter who you are sometimes you have to get dirty. A line ruptured and flooded several spaces with pitch black oil. About neck high. On top of that we were sure there were a few bodies in there. Me and a buddy had to climb into the oil pool and wade through two rooms to get the pumps placed and confirm other things. Power is cut off of course so we had nothing but flashlights. Yes. We found one of the bodies. The other guy was actually elsewhere napping on the job. Probably saved his own life.” — dancesrarely

14. It looked like a scene out of The Walking Dead

“My buddy and I were about 20 miles west of the lower keys, in the Gulf of Mexico. We were on his Bertram looking for dolphin and wahoo when we see a boat in the distance heading our direction. We weren’t under power or anything, just drifting and drinking beer. The boat gets closer and we see smoke. It was pretty much a burned out cabin at that point, but still running. It just idled by. We yank our lines up and go run it down, luckily no charred corpses (that I could see). I kick it into neutral with a gaff and we decided to see where it came from. On the way we reported its location to Coast Guard. We drove that general direction for probably 10 miles. Didn’t see a single thing. No other boats, no life jackets, nothing. Hopefully the people who were on that boat were picked up safety. It was like something from Walking Dead. Just a burned out boat floating on by…” — shitterplug

15. I was tempted to commit suicide

“Halfway through an 8 month deployment we found ourselves in a dense fog in the middle of calm seas. The way the fog was sitting made it look like a soft white sand beach was about 30 feet away from the ship. I had such a strong urge to jump off the ship and swim to that little white sand beach that I had to force myself to go below deck. I knew, deep down, that there was no beach, but my eyes and brain were telling me that was what I was looking at, and the peace I imagined sitting on that little beach was incredibly tempting.” — app134

16. We pulled bloating bodies out of the water

“Hmm… not the Ocean so I’m a bit out of place, but I worked as deck hand on the Maid of the Mist in Niagara Falls. Worked there two summers in a row. We had to pull a floating body out of the water once each of those years. Apparently, it’s pretty common. Well… we had to tow it to shore anyway. Fun stuff. The federal police (FBI, RCMP) for both countries had to come because the Niagara river splits the US and Canada so no one really knows where the bodies are from at first. So yeah seeing a couple soggy bloated bodies was pretty fucked up for me.” — OscarWilde1854

17. An alcoholic accidentally fell overboard

“Not me, but my brother was stationed in Hawaii, and is currently in the coast guard. His first week on island, he’s told to investigate a homeless man who was spotted a couple of hundred miles off shore. Apparently he wasn’t found offshore, and the two men who called it in were involved in his death. He went on to tell me that a couple of longshore fishermen needed one more man for their voyage, but couldn’t find anyone, so what do they do? Obviously go to the park and see if a homeless man wants to make a couple hundred bucks, duh. Anyway, while out at sea, the homeless guy, who was an alcoholic, started to detox, got disoriented, and fell overboard. The fishermen noticed him missing after a few hours, and saw he fell overboard (they might have been anchored at that spot, idk) These guys call the coast guard, tell them they have a man overboard, get the guy back onboard, and stuff him in one of the freezers. My brother said seeing a dead man frozen solid in a freezer was a pretty shitty way to start his time in paradise. Oh, and the guys didn’t get charged either, because apparently they haven’t persecuted a ‘shanghai’ case in about 100 years.” — kayfrain

18. Boats would randomly disappear from the radar

“Deep fog, like I couldn’t see the front of the yacht (sailing), and it was only 50 foot. The real creepy part came from the radar system tracking the boats and ships around us. Our radar, not being a commercial shipping or fishermen spec, was not quite as accurate so sometimes boats would disappear, be right on top of us, or appear in sight but not on radar. That, on top of the sheer quantity of marine debris throughout the ocean, made me really scared that some boats had sunk when they dropped off radar.” — Bainosaur

19. We found a child’s lifejacket in the water

“I was Bosun on a three masted schooner, we were sailing down the coast of Brazil and our lookout spotted something orange in the water. Checked it out with binoculars, determined in was a lifejacket so we put the rescue boat in the water and myself and another crew member went to retrieve it. Turned out it was a child’s lifejacket, lots of growth and all the distinguishing marks had faded on it so it had been in the ocean for a while. Thankfully no remains came out with it. No idea where it came from or what happened but pulling a child’s life jacket out of the water is a somber experience. Left us pretty chilled.” — capn_r3db3ard

20. He saw the ghost of a dog running around on deck

“Not me, but my dad’s a captain and has some stories. Apparently there’s some seasickness medication that’s also mildly hallucinogenic, which has caused some problems in the past. Notably, one dude (who had never been that far out to sea before) just ripped off his lifejacket, said “I didn’t sign up for this,” and tried to walk off the back of the boat. They had to restrain him, after which he went kinda dead in the eyes for a few hours until he recovered. Another dude claimed to see a dog running around on deck.” — inside-us-only-stars

21. A cyclone tore the entire place to shreds

“I was on a research vessel south of the Solomon islands after a cyclone had torn the place to shreds. Come 3am its time to lower the instrument (a CTD with Nisken bottle rosette for those interested ) and turn on the search lights over the quaterdeck. The ocean surface is awash with coconut palms, bits of wood, outdoor furniture and so on. The islands had been swept clean and the ship was sitting in a vast field of floating debris. Mesmerized by this I kept staring at it all when I noticed a small pink shape with what appeared to be arms, legs and a head. My heart almost stopped beating. A child? Closer inspection revealed it was a child’s doll. But for those few seconds… horrific.” — dgblarge

22. The ship suffered from unknown damage

“Up by Alaska in rough sees. Our office was below the waterline, on the outside of the ship, right below a sponson. There was a full-size I-beam running around the outside edge of the office. It was probably 10 inches wide and we used is as a shelf, storing full-size binders on it. One day in rough weather six of us were in the office (three officers, three enlisted) when we heard an ENORMOUS bang, so loud that our ears rang and all of us jumped out of our seats. After checking to make sure we weren’t taking on water (and calling Damage Control) we started looking around to determine what could have caused it. We couldn’t find anything; nothing had come loose, nothing had fallen, the dry tank below the office was still dry, etc. We eventually noticed that the I-beam had cracked. Not a hairline fracture, not a little split, but the entire beam had separated lengthwise by about 5mm! We took a wave up under the sponson with so much energy that it bowed in the hull of the ship and split the beam, but the beam didn’t ever go back to the original length. The crack was also precise and even; you could slide a pencil in the gap all the way back to the bulkhead. In fact, the split was so wide they couldn’t weld it directly closed. They had to cut a 5mm shim to fill the gap. It was amazing, and we had hundreds of people come through the office for the next couple of weeks to see it. A couple of people tried to calculate the energy needed to instantly separate the I-beam that was 4 feet away from where we were sitting but it was too scary to contemplate.” — UniqueMumbles

23. I was trapped on a ship during a hurricane

“I was on ship during Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. During the worst of it the wind made the most eeriest noises and the ship was creaking and making all sorts of metal on metal noises a ship shouldn’t make.” — Rumpleshite

24. We found disturbing wreckage after a tsunami

“Was on a fishing trip off the coast of Oregon. This was about a year after the big tsunami in Japan. The captain saw something off in the distance, so we went to look. It was a small refrigerator with Japanese writing on it. Just creepy to know that probably washed out of someone’s apartment…” — stickben

25. A shark appeared out of nowhere

“We did a man overboard drill on the way to Hawaii which includes throwing a dummy into the water. I went portside to see the experience in less than one minute, and by the time I reached the water there was already a 8 foot shark waiting near the dummy.” — gtaguy75    

About the author

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Holly Riordan

Holly is the author of Severe(d): A Creepy Poetry Collection .

The Guilty Twin

The Guilty Twin

The guilt will kill you. Unless your family does first…

The new thriller by Holly Riordan explores the devastating disappearance of a beloved twin sister and the secrets that can no longer remain hidden.

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yacht crew horror stories reddit

The dark side of yachting

Sexual harassment and assault is a pervasive problem that many in the industry don’t want to acknowledge, yet nearly all female crew say they have had to grapple with it at some point in their career..

In the tight-knit, high-pressure, service-oriented environment of a yacht, a crew member’s job is to make the impossible possible and to always say yes. So what happens when the answer is no?

The International Labour Organization (ILO), Lloyds Register Foundation, and Gallup all report that more than one in five employees have experienced violence and harassment at work, whether physical, psychological, or sexual — and the superyacht industry is not immune.

Among the calls received in 2022 by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network’s Yacht Crew Helpline, “sexual abuse and harassment — many severe rape cases — accounted for 5.02% of total cases,” according to Georgia Allen, ISWAN projects and relationships manager. And in an anonymous poll posted on the Palma Yacht Crew Facebook group in January, more than 40% of survey respondents said they had been sexually harassed or assaulted by another crew member.

Sexual harassment is a broad term, including many types of unwelcome verbal and physical sexual attention. Sexual assault is defined as physical contact or behavior without the explicit consent of the victim. The claims are not based on whether the victim or perpetrator is male or female; they are based on whether the comments, actions, or contact — verbal or physical — is unwanted and offensive.

By its nature, the industry is highly hierarchical, and many senior roles tend to be occupied by men, often resulting in a male-dominated leadership structure. This gender imbalance in leadership can facilitate abuse and has the potential to let negative behaviors go unchecked.

Also, the reactive rather than proactive stance within an industry already known for its lack of universal regulation and oversight has meant certain procedures and policies intended to serve as safeguards for this issue have fallen by the wayside. With increasing professionalism, much of this questionable activity could be curbed. However, sexual harassment and assault run rife within the industry, and the yachting-specific #metoo movement continues.

But why? Is there a lack of proper leadership training, or a weak reporting and repercussion infrastructure? Is a negative onboard culture to blame? Triton ’s intention with this story is not  a finger-pointing exercise or an exposé on the lurid details of various cases that have been reported to us by crew. Instead, we consulted authorities on the topic and explored the various avenues that exist to better understand why this problem continues to pervade the industry — and what can be done to stop it.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

The recruitment process

As a workplace, yachting is highly singular. Blurred lines between work and living create a unique conundrum for the crew — and for those assembling them.

In the no holds barred, “Wild West of the sea” environment of earlier eras, contracts were given out on bar napkins and good faith; today, there are more stringent recruitment processes. However, perpetrators continue to enter the industry and maintain their employment on board. Tim Clarke, director of Quay Crew, said, “We know that predators are working within yachting.”

The fact that these candidates are still getting on board is troubling. Liam Dobbin, director at crew agency Wilsonhaligan, explained that the recruitment process needs more honesty. “As a minimum standard, we always speak with references and check with people who aren’t even listed as a reference,” he said.

Clarke concurs. “Every candidate we put forward has a verbal reference taken,” he said. “The reason for this is that written references mean absolutely nothing. Weekly, we get told one horror story over the phone and countless more verbal references which don’t match the written reference.”

While some agencies do their due diligence, perpetrators still fall through the gaps and continue to work on board.

Toxic cultures

One root cause of harassment and abuse can be the lack of a psychologically safe working environment. Psychological safety means crew members can speak up about issues without losing their jobs or suffering some other punishment.

Charles Watkins, clinical psychologist and founder of Mental Health Support Solutions, said, “Creating an environment of psychological safety means people are resilient enough, trust their leaders enough to speak up, and that will result in action.”

If this is lacking and there is a toxic onboard culture, it suggests bad behavior can continue. Harassment and sexual assault continue in yachting because there is “an environment that turns a blind eye towards it, or at least doesn’t actively talk about these issues, and people refusing to act,” Watkins said.

While the boundaries of this bad behavior are clear to many, these lines can become hazy when under the influence. The use (and abuse) of alcohol is a part of yachting culture that is normalized through a fully stocked crew mess and the “work hard, play hard” mentality. This, of course, does not apply to all yachts and crew, nor is it the crux of the issue. But it can compound it. Angela Wallace, director of the welfare group at PYA, pointed out that “perpetrators can get away with it under the guise of too much alcohol.”

Positions of power

The leadership cultivates the culture; if there is toxicity on board, a crew member in a position of power is allowing it. As in other industries, abuse of power is not a new issue, and it clearly plays into scenarios of sexual harassment and abuse.

“As probably in many other situations, it [sexual harassment] is an abuse of power,” said Wallace. And Watkins echoed that statement. “We see a lot that it [sexual harassment] is often because of an abuse of power” he said.

Capt. Kelly Gordon explained: “It seems as if some captains and HODs [heads of department] think that their position provides them with a sense of power that they often abuse. I have seen higher ranks use their position to make unwelcome sexual advances, and sadly, the crew member rarely speaks up for fear of being fired. I have witnessed HODs be downright mean to those they are in charge of.”

Capt. Gordon is challenging industry trends. She of the Sea, an organization advocating for gender equality and diversity, found that only one in four women in yachting occupy a senior position. This gender inequality plays an important role in the problem. For example, it isn’t uncommon for job roles to be advertised as gender-specific, with the subordinate roles generally being “female only.” While more women in leadership roles won’t eliminate the problem, it would help to create more significant gender equity, altering male domination within the industry.

These ingrained issues of power and gender imbalance may be the cause of the current low crew retention rates. Last month’s conference in Nice on “improving crew retention” is one sign of this industry-wide problem. While some may put it down to the “younger, more entitled generation” entering the industry, could it be instead that people are no longer willing to suffer silently within these toxic environments?

He said, she said

Creating an environment whereby the crew can feel safe to speak up is crucial, but what infrastructure is in place to do so?

Vessel compliance is an issue that is failing parts of the industry. Under the International Safety Management (ISM) code, commercially registered vessels over 500 GT must implement a mandatory safety management system (SMS) that identifies and safeguards against various issues, including bullying and harassment.

This code also requires vessels to have a designated person ashore (DPA) implemented by yacht management. These vessels must also be Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) compliant, stipulating contractual terms of the seafarer’s rights at work.

But the majority of contracts within the industry also come with an NDA, and some crew may feel gagged by these nondisclosure agreements. “NDAs are often frequently used for dubious reasons,” said Clarke. “While this culture of brushing incidents under the carpet exists, yachting will always have this issue.”

Although it is recommended that vessels under 500 GT follow MLC guidelines and comply with national employment laws and respective flag states, there is no requirement for them to do so.

Many vessels have documentation related to bullying and harassment, and typically it refers the crew member to the captain or HOD. But to whom can the crew member turn if one of them is the perpetrator? And without mandatory implementation, what happens on all the vessels under 500 GT that are slipping through these nets?

Yachts are part of a global, transient industry that crosses various jurisdictions, and this can be an additional hurdle when it comes to legally reporting sexual assault cases.

Better recruiting

While the problems are evident, what is being done to mitigate them is less so. A first, vital step would be getting the right people on board to foster a positive and safe environment.

“Agencies should be doing all they can to protect candidates rather than think only about the fee,” Clarke said. One way his company, Quay Crew, does this is through CrewPass.

CrewPass is a crew vetting system created by Conrad Empson, an ex-crew member and star of the Bravo “Below Deck” reality TV series. The system aims to tighten security and safety within the yacht recruitment process by providing a central place for recruiters to run a full, global criminal background check on crew and to verify their certification.

“Once every two weeks, we get a crew member reaching out to report someone that was violent,” Empson said. “We store that name and that information when we do a criminal search to investigate further.”

“CrewPass is an excellent tool to reduce the risk of hiring that predator, and it protects the owner, guests, and crew from being in close proximity to that person,” Clarke said.

If everyone were to use the CrewPass service, would this reduce the number of perpetrators getting on board? Perhaps. “Clean recruiting” is an excellent method in theory, but what about those perpetrators without records?

Capt. Luke Hammond offers another solution through his recently launched “recruitment by referral” platform, Refrr. “I am getting someone on board that is already referred, so there is my social proof — and on the flip side, that person knows that because they were referred [by a friend], they aren’t stepping into a crazy workplace,” Capt. Hammond said.

Among recruiters, there are diverse opinions on psychological testing to ensure the right crew is put together. While there can be benefits, such tests are certainly not a perfect indicator of an individual’s personality.

As Capt. Hammond put it, “Once you stack the work hours, long days, lack of sleep, everyone cracks. It’s not if, it’s when.” Reinforcing his reasoning on referrals, he added, “How someone reacts at that moment is down to who knows them and has worked with them before.”

Training is key

The industry recruits and gives power to individuals based on experience rather than leadership capacity. The crew may be trained for all first-aid, firefighting, and sea survival eventualities, but with no human resource staff on board, there is a gap in training to ensure a psychologically safe environment. Watkins notes that the crew is trained in performance, not people management.

The Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities (PSSR) module within the STCW briefly touches on the issue, but it is woefully inadequate. Some maritime schools opt for more in-depth training, such as the HELM Operational and Management courses — but more must be done. “In psychology, just like medicine, the earlier you catch things, the easier it is to treat,” Watkins said.

Lucy Mess, head of crew at Burgess, said, “Education and training are key. The aim is to deal with the issue before it becomes an issue.”

Former purser Emma Brealey, now head of operations at the Crew Academy, said, “Training around communication, leadership, and conflict resolution can empower crew with knowledge and the confidence to stand up.”

Shelley Viljoen, head of recruitment at The Crew Hunter, said, “Training can definitely mitigate issues of power and control. We provide a safeguarding course which is about training crew to prevent abusive behaviors and to act on them.”

Implementing mandatory training and education will also help change attitudes. “We must wipe out ‘old school’ attitudes on board yachts,” said Mess.

Emma Kate Ross, founder of Seasthemind, said, “It is important to listen and communicate nonjudgmentally and to have better-nuanced conversations.”

Some crew commented in the anonymous Facebook poll that while they had not been subject to sexual harassment or abuse themseves, they had witnessed it or known of others within the industry who experienced it. Training is also a critical element in actualizing change through the role of bystanders.

Zero tolerance

Increased awareness promotes zero-tolerance attitudes. Perpetrators must know they will not get away with sexual harassment and assault without recourse. However, at the moment, there is no way to blacklist a crew member who has sexual harassment or abuse history — whether reported or not. The MLC provisions detailed in Article 1.4 state that “recruitment companies will not maintain a blacklist to prevent individual seafarers from gaining employment.”

Upon Triton ’s questioning, it was explained that the unions insisted on adding this clause as a response to blacklists of seafarers who were union members, or who had made complaints or raised health and safety concerns. Regardless, it still means slipping through the net is possible if you have a chequered past or an unchecked criminal record.

Some management companies are working hard to ensure that action is taken.

“We must manage the discipline of the sexual harasser correctly. Any complaints will be managed within the yacht disciplinary and grievance procedures,” said Mess.

Agnes Nilendere, yacht operations manager for Bluewater, said, “Our managed vessels have harassment and bullying procedures on board as part of the safety system.”

While such proactive steps sound good in theory, challenges remain when it comes to junior crew members needing to report a more senior crew member. For the crew to feel safe in reporting, there needs to be a neutral and independent resource unconnected to the yacht. Karine Rayson, founder of The Crew Coach, said, “We need an objective, independent party to manage and address these issues.”

Change is in the air

Despite the appearance of a never-ending uphill battle, policies can and are being changed. Many organizations, such as Safer Waves and Human Rights At Sea, didn’t exist 10 years ago. Today, they are helping move the correct agenda forward.

CHIRP (the Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme) advocates for an onboard culture of safety on the presumption that a collaborative approach has the most impact. Earlier this year, CHIRP brought together similar organizations — Safer Waves, Mission to Seafarers, ISWAN, and The Seafarers Charity — to tackle the issue. This month, they plan another meeting to discuss a power-in-numbers approach, with the hope of driving tangible change.

COPE (the Center for Ocean Policy and Economics) is also making extremely positive progress after submitting proposals to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Eva Lianne Veldkamp, who leads the working group on psychological safety, bullying, sexual abuse, and harassment, said, “The future will see mandatory training requirements, specifically for sexual harassment and bullying, and they are being developed and finalized with priority as part of the comprehensive review of the STCW, and it will be considered for amendments in the ISM code and a point of discussion at ILO concerning human rights.”

Resource list for crew:

Women Offshore

Safer Waves

The Seafarers Charity

Mission to Seafarers

Seasthemind

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05-08-2010, 22:52  
Boat: Triton 24
in amazement and dismay, but on the plus side it provides an interesting if shocking story to tell over drinks or the . So: I was wondering if anyone else has crew horror stories they may wish to share. Feel free to change the names to protect the (not so) inncocent
09-09-2010, 12:09  
Boat: Tayana 37
and owner horror stories!
09-09-2010, 12:12  
Boat: 50' steel canal and river cruiser
09-09-2010, 12:20  
Boat: Tayana 37
from southern MX asked me to go find some belts. When I returned there sat my bags packed and sitting on the . Owner and were gone along with my travel reimbursement and the monies I had paid for , , etc.
09-09-2010, 13:27  
to from . I met the owner and , neither one of which could tell me with a straight face who was going to be in charge. The owner didn't want to do any short of give orders, the pulled me aside and said all kinds of garbage about the owner, and wanted me to cook sushi for him every other night.

The owner wanted to get out there in three weeks, leaving in a few days, spend a week sailing around the big island with a friend, then we needed to come back, also allocating three weeks.

I showed up a few days before we were going to leave at a time we had scheduled in advance, and the owner was drunk off his ass passed out in his berth. Oh, and this same guy thought it was bad luck to leave on a Friday. Of all the things that he could do to make a more successful, he resorted to an archaic superstition.

I passed on the whole affair.

Two months later the boat was . I'm so happy I didn't get onboard that hellride.
11-09-2010, 13:17  
for a week with Allaboard doing a Day Practical Course . The course was two weeks and we were joined for the second week by a quiet German guy and John from Weymouth . Well he was doing his Coastal Skipper Qualification so the Instructor gave him the job of a crew brief and out to sea . We were briefed .. About not being afraid if the boat tipped etc . What a day . Everything had to be done BY THE BOOK .. Etc . WE had had a great time upto this point . We were now dreading the rest of the week and SWMBO decided that she would sort the because she would know what had gone in it . We all departed to the pub . Had a couple and returned back to the boat .

What a great meal . Couple of bottles of wine and the John says he's off for a . We all breath a sigh . He's gone . Next we hear . Man Over Board . We all pile up on and he has managed to hook a foot round a line as he was departing the bow and finished up with feet on the bows and finger tips on the quay . Not being able to do anything else he let go . SPLASH . Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap .

He headed off to the showers and we went below .

No one say anything when he comes back . Its been bad enough all day let alone this as well .

I'm banned from SAYING ANYTHING by SWMBO on pain of death . Off to the and early to .

Next morning still banned from saying a word as I exit the to make coffee . John is already up and dressed . First thing he says is " That was a daft thing to do wasn't it . Well he started it so we all pitched in .

He was nowhere as bad for the rest of the holiday ..

Meanwhile the quiet German 'Mark' would rush down below everytime we got within site of a port to see if he had a signal on his mobile. Then we all had to do HIS bit because he was busy chatting to friends about what he had been doing all day .... in Weymouth ..

Hi JOHN ...
18-09-2010, 16:40  
with a friend. This old beater triple decker that was probably an old built in the 1930s sailed out of port with a Mexican rock band going full bore and all the free pina coladas and margaritas you could hold down.

First, the started getting rough, and the band was kinda doing the two-step back and forth across the stage as the boat rocked. Then came the "fireworks show" which was basically the crew launching these fat skyrockets from the top . Many of them were landing back on the boat before exploding. If I , one rocket bounced off the deck and landed right in the middle of the band before exploding in a of sparks. The band played on and the crowd of about 30 sunburned and hard drinking gringos didn't flinch. But I was getting kinda concerned because I noticed: 1) the boat was now listing about 20 degrees to port, and 2) we were foundering about 1 mile outside the harbor, in heavy seas.

I climbed up a ladder to look into the bridge to see why the boat was no longer motoring, but listing, and rocking hard. What I saw sent a shiver down my spine. The captain had taken apart the and was using a mallet to hammer something into place inside the housing. .
22-09-2010, 11:59  
Boat: Prior boats: Transpac 49; DeFever 54
to from San Diego a number of years ago. I knew the owners casually as they were moored on the same dock as we were. Had more $ than brains which should have been my first clue that something was amiss. Cosmetically, the boat was fairly well maintained but I was a little concerned about the seaworthiness of the mechanical systems. I badgered the owner about having the cleaned for several weeks before the scheduled departure while I checked out the other main systems. He finally assured me that the were cleaned and polished and we were good to go. I even took the boat out of the harbor to test things out and the owner asked me not to run up over 1300 as he was trying to conserve fuel. The night before we were to leave, a crew who he had hired got into it with a woman who showed up at the boat. Both appeared to have been drinking heavily and we watched them physically fighting from our boat down the dock. Police were called, woman ejected from the marina and the owner fired the crew . This guy had been hired without me knowing about it (another harbinger of trouble ahead). My wife agreed to come along to help out along with another couple who the owner had previously invited, making up a group of 6. About 20 hours out, everything shut down... both engines, , causing loss of to all , 110v systems,stabilizers etc. Position was about 120 km north of Cedros Island out 50 km from shore. Boat immediately swung beam on to the heavy northwesterly swell running about 8 to 10 feet. Immediately ran down to the room and checked the fuel filters which were clogged with muck and debris ( I had cleaned them just prior to leaving). Swapped out the filters and got one engine running but no . I asked the owner who cleaned the tanks and his reply was that his boat had been sabotaged by the crew he fired who obviously had come back aboard and put coffee grounds down the fuel filler. Finally got the other engine running just in time to have the first engine start blowing smoke due to the fact that the owner had never run either engine over 1300 which caused the turbo to choke up. Long story, but the disasters continued to mount, mechanically and electrically (one generator caught fire between Cabo and PV). The owner refused to return to Cabo for so we limped into PV in the middle of the night and immediately left the boat first thing in the morning. Certainly, the from hell!
Lessons learned:
Everyone understands who is in charge, Skipper? Owner? Guests?
Check and double check every system under as many sea conditions as possible
Make sure you know something about everyone who is going to be aboard, capabilities, experience, personality (if possible)
You hire or invite the crew
Don't ever take representations at face value as to condition of vessels systems

The one bright spot to this whole disaster was the couple who accompanied us turned out to be wonderful folks who remained our friends for years.
As a footnote, the owner the boat in years later and I was asked to bring her north by the new owners. On entering harbor on the way to San Diego, we were met by an attorney representing a mexican national who claimed he had been stiffed by the former owner and wanted $3000 in back wages. The Port Captain would not clear the boat until the claim was paid. I negotiated a settlement and we were on our way. Life is never dull out there!! Capt Phil
27-09-2010, 15:11  
. I know this from experience
19-10-2015, 11:09  
Boat: Pearson 367
 
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coronavirus-advice-superyacht-charter-crew

The most outrageous superyacht guest requests

If you’ve been watching the dramatic season nine of TV show Below Deck , then you’ll know that superyacht charter guests can be quite demanding clients. We hear from yacht captains and crew as they talk about the scandalous stories of their time on board and reveal the most outrageous requests they’ve ever received from millionaire and model superyacht charter guests. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent – and not so innocent…

Chicken carpaccio

"One guest once asked me to serve chicken carpaccio. I always adopt a 'yes, can do' attitude toward yachting, but I had to let him down with a big no."

Hokkaido melon

"On a previous yacht, I had to organise a melon in Italy for a guest onboard. Not a difficult task in August. However, the guest wanted one from Japan – a very rare strain of Hokkaido melon. It took more than six days, many emails, phone calls, tenders and a helicopter flight to bring the melon on board, but we did it. The guest did not touch it in the end!"

Volcanic black sand

"I remember once we had to travel hundreds of miles to go to some small volcanic island because the owner's wife had asked for 'some black sand'. Once we arrived, she didn't even go on the beach, but just sent a crew member with a jar to collect some, but then she left it on the boat when she left. It was really odd."

Live baby octopus

"A guest once requested live baby octopus; literally serving a squirming bowl of octopus. You eat it with chopsticks, put it in your mouth and swallow it whole. That was bizarre!"

Out of season papaya

"I was once woken at 3am and asked for an out-of-season papaya. The guest wanted both the seeds and fruit for their holistic skin regime."

Aesthetically-pleasing staff

"I heard our owner ask the captain: 'could you please get some better looking girls to work on this boat?” It happens a lot, of course, that owners have certain specs for crew, but the downside is you have more turnover this way so it’s really not an ideal way to run the boat. Of course, it’s also incredibly shallow."

Personalised gym

"I was doing a charter in St Barths and the primary charterer requested: 'Can we convert one of the suites into a gym with state-of-the-art equipment?' After a scramble, a lot of phone calls and about $60,000, the gym equipment was delivered and set up. But not once during the entire charter did a single guest use it. Instead, they got drunk and smoked cigars. When they left we were due to pick up another charter in 24 hours, so we put all the unused gym equipment on the dock with a “free” sign."

Flavourless Italian food

"The strangest request I received was Italian food with no garlic, onion, olive oil, salt or herbs (except basil, which could be put in whole and steeped but had to be removed before serving), Needless to say, that job did not last long."

Rigging request

"We got a very specific request from a client who wanted to know strange details about the in-mast rigging and roller furler. They very clearly had a fetish about being tied up and were hoping to act out this fantasy on a sailing yacht. It was too detailed for it to be a hoax. I don't think the yacht owner accepted the charter."

500 white roses

"One of the craziest requests I had was when I was working as a stewardess on a charter. The Mrs was the type who would ask for ridiculous stuff just to see if we could do it. We were anchored in the middle of nowhere in the Caribbean and it was already the middle of the afternoon. We had these huge vases in the main saloon and she said: ‘I want these full of 500 white roses and I want white roses everywhere by dinner.’

I had to first source that many roses, which I found in Miami, then had to hire a private plane to get them to the Caribbean, then a seaplane to land next to the yacht. Then, of course, I had to get them on board and have them ready by dinner. I did it and she loved it, but as soon as dinner was over, she said: ‘Get rid of them. You can throw them overboard if you want.’ I couldn’t bear to do it! So I took them down below and the crew mess and cabins were full of white roses for a week! I couldn’t believe how much it cost, probably close to $100,000 between flights and hundreds of white roses."

New York bagels

"We were in St. Barths and the guests had to have bagels from Zabar's in New York for the next day. We did it. We got a private jet and flew them in: the pilots taxied them to us."

"The strangest request I've ever received is probably to cook a sea slug that the young kids picked up off the ocean floor... It was a joke in the end, but I made them cookies with a worm coming out of one of them, while the others were filled with jam."

No topping pizza

"I love being able to use my creativity to concoct new dishes. Someone once asked me for a Margherita pizza without cheese or sauce."

Cucumber cubes

"I once had a guest who wanted cucumber cubes cut to exactly 10 millimetres for breakfast. I had to use a ruler to ensure they were accurate."

The party yacht

“One client had a fleet of yachts but would always  charter an extra yacht  as the after-party venue. As part of his crew, I had to go clubbing with him and give all the ‘hottest’ girls a stamp to go to the party on the yacht. (I was allowed to stamp some guys — about a 4:1 ratio.) By the end of the week everyone knew me as the gatekeeper to get on the party yacht. The parties were really intense. I was pretty much nocturnal working for him.”

Dom Pérignon delivery

“A common occurrence on a charter is getting Champagne flown in by seaplane when the guests are partying too much and we’ve run out of Dom Pérignon.”

Kosher kitchen

“I had a client who wanted to charter a certain yacht but he was kosher and the kitchen was not. So he brought in all new cutlery and plates and redid the galley to make it kosher. He even brought in his own chef, all because he wanted that specific yacht.”

X-rated yacht

“I worked for owners once who had sex toys and pornography books all over the boat, which we were instructed to keep out as part of the décor. Funnily enough, it was a really popular charter yacht, so every time we had a charter we had to make sure it was all put away. One time we thought we had removed everything but forgot to put a book away, and the charter clients found it. Thank God they weren’t offended and thought it was hilarious!”

To hear more stories from life on board, get the latest issue of BOAT International sent straight to your door.

More stories

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9 superyacht crew members share what it's really like working for a billionaire on board

  • Superyachts are luxurious, but working on them isn't.
  • Insider polled superyacht crew members to find out what it's really like working for a billionaire on board.
  • They said their days are spent fulfilling requests and keeping the yacht in top shape — but it really all depends on the superyacht owner.
  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories .

Insider Today

While working on a superyacht sounds glamorous, in reality it can be anything but.

Insider polled superyacht crew members to get an inside look at life on board. When asked what working for a millionaire or billionaire is really like, they agreed on a few things, like long hours.

Many superyacht  crew members wake up before dawn to start their day, which typically involves a lot of cleaning and catering to the requests of owners and guests.

Read more: The super rich are hoarding cash — instead bartering yachts, $30 million mansions, and caviar to ride out the pandemic

But while some superyacht owners are demanding, others are less so — it really all depends on their personality. Some crew members said that owners and guests are more like regular people than you'd expect.

Here's what life on board looks like, according to nine superyacht crew members.

Note: Insider was able to verify each crew member's identity, but we refrained from publishing their full names to protect their privacy.

Working on a yacht can be lucrative.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Insider previously reported that deckhands earn an average of $3,083 to $3,574 a month, depending on the boat size. Captains reportedly get paid even more — they earn $7,750 to $19,961 a month on average.

Kate Lardy of the Sun Sentinel reported that a captain in Fort Lauderdale once spent a total of $14,255 on day workers, who are hired temporarily for onboard services, during a two-month period.

But it's also tiring and demanding.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

One captain who works on a 120-foot boat alluded to tiring conditions. Working for a billionaire is "demanding," he said, with hours that begin very early — before 6 a.m. — and end very late.

Yacht crew members have to meet high expectations.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

One electronic technical officer who works on a 223-foot yacht stressed the pressure of delivering top-notch service while remaining level-headed.

Working on a yacht involves "very, very long days with little rest and expectations to perform at the highest levels of service while not losing your cool under pressure," he said.

They have to work hard to keep yachts spotless.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Guests and owners can be messy and dirty — and it's up to the crew to make sure it doesn't look that way. A mate on a 92-foot yacht said he had to wake up before guests or other crew members to get the yacht's exterior ready for the day.

"They expect it to look like no one has touched it," he said. "So any rain or dew, water spots, bird crap, or salt spray has to be continuously cleaned, not to mention having to constantly wipe stainless [steel] and glass when guests move around the boat. They leave smudges and fingerprints everywhere.

"By the time I start at the top of the boat and move around drying the boat, washing windows, and prepping water toys, depending on where the guests are, it's time to clean behind them."

He said he then has to be available for whatever the day brings, whether guests want to take the tender out or play with water toys, the interior crew needs help with service, or any maintenance issues need to be addressed.

There's a lot of cleaning, smiling, and snacking.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Nic, a chief stewardess, shared her typical daily itinerary, which extends from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., with a one-hour break for a power nap.

There's constant snacking, as she doesn't always have time to sit and eat, she said. She's also "always thinking and planning ahead for the next meal or excursion," like what guests "need to take with them and what they need upon return," she said.

"Always thinking of ways to make the day special and 'perfect' (as much as possible)," she said.

She added: "Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, and lots of smiling. Behind the scenes, a lot of running around and working at high speed, throwing stuff into drawers and sorting it out later when you have time, laughing, and keeping crew spirits high. Never-ending laundry."

Work is easier when the owners are away, which is often.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Billionaire owners actually don't spend a lot of time on their multimillion-dollar yachts. Neither do the guests who charter them.

"Owners or guests are typically not on the boat all that much, so most of the time the crew has the boat to themselves," said Michael, a former yacht captain who worked on yachts ranging from 130 to 170 feet.

"Work is pretty easy and consists of general maintenance and keeping the boat in perfect/ready state for when the owner does show up. If you have a good crew it can be very enjoyable. If you do not, it can be very stressful and miserable."

Everything depends on the owner's personality.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

Some crew members get lucky working for generous yacht owners, while others get treated like the help.

"It's hard work and long days when they are on board," said Martin, the captain of a 155-foot yacht. "It really depends on the owner. Some have treated me like family, and some have treated me like a servant."

But sometimes it's not the owner who's difficult.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

A chef on a 150-foot motor yacht also said that working for a billionaire could be unpredictable, as every boat and owner is different.

But it's not the owner of the yacht who's always difficult to work for.

"Bear in mind that the captain is every bit as much your boss as the owner is, and sometimes the captain is a bigger pain in the ass than the billionaire owner," she said.

Yacht owners are just your everyday people on vacation — with more money.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

According to Mark, the captain of a 114-foot yacht, billionaire owners are just like normal vacationers. Kind of.

"They're just people holidaying, but with more money and toys to fill their days," he said.

They can be more down-to-earth than expected, but their spontaneity can be frustrating.

yacht crew horror stories reddit

"It's really nice to find out that some of the wealthiest people you'll work for are actually more down-to-earth and normal like any person you'd meet on the street," a stewardess on a 112-foot sailing yacht said. "The saying is 'money screams, wealth whispers.'"

She added: "A typical day involves turning heads, beds, and laundry for guests and crew, which can be a lot if you're a department of one. Food and beverage service three times a day. A lot of plans and schedules change on the fly depending on the owners and their wants and whims, which can be a bit frustrating."

yacht crew horror stories reddit

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Deep Sea Divers Are Sharing Their Most Horrifying Experiences And I've Never Been More Afraid Of The Ocean Than I Am Now

IDK how to swim, but I have no urgency to learn after reading these stories.

Salimah McCullough

BuzzFeed Staff

Being a scuba diver/deep-sea diver seems like one of those jobs that's super interesting but also super terrifying. Deep-sea divers proved that to be completely true when Reddit user u/ahelpfuljakeparkmain asked , "Deep-sea divers, what are your horror stories?" they had tons of bone-chilling stories to share.

Some submissions are also from a thread started by u/BopJuice and a thread by u/i-drank-too-much .

So brace yourselves, because here are just 25 of the wildest experiences people have had while deep diving:

1. "i was 18 meters down when my air went bad. it had a weird metallic sugary taste to it, and i started losing consciousness. i pointed myself up and pulled my bcd (buoyancy compensator), and about 6 meters from the surface, i blacked out.".

A person reaching their hand above water for help

"When I woke up, I was being hauled into the dive boat; I blew both my eardrums and haven't been able to dive since. I got very fuckin' lucky; I could have drowned."

— u/Nolsoth

2. "When I was 15, I took the family boat out and dove the reef myself to clear my head. That was mistake number one. I was down at a depth of about 90 feet when I was only rated for 60. While diving, I spotted a 3.5-meter mako shark coming right at me. For those who are unaware, makos are basically the cheetahs of the ocean, and they only have two speeds: curious (harmless) and lunch (very much harmful). This guy was in lunch mode. So I hovered, as I had been trained to do since there was no way for me to escape it."

A mako shark swimming and a person floating above

"Nowadays, we dive with Shark Shields, which emit electronic pulses that freak the sharks out and keep them away, but back then, what we used was essentially a chain-mail sleeve — the idea being that sharks hate the taste of metal, so if you give it your arm, it'll bite down, decide you're gross, and move along. So I wait, and it comes, and I make a perfect move to give it my arm. However, just before the crunch, it occurred to me that I had left my sleeve on my bed. I had my kelp knife drawn; however, now I had a series of problems. 

I had a HUGE open gashing wound on my arm from the bite in open water and trailed blood everywhere. Once the shock wore off, you realize that you're in SALT water, and salt and open wounds don't feel good. In a panic, I dropped my weight belt and shot up to the surface without any sort of waiting period. Because I hadn't been paying attention to the currents, I was approximately a quarter-mile downstream of my boat, which means I had to swim up to it. 

So I end up racing back to shore with nothing more than a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding. Long story short, my series of unfortunate self-inflicted events earned me 172 stitches, boatloads of physical therapy because the shark had actually bitten down on my tricep and detached it, and easily identifiable scars on one of my arms for the rest of my life. Oh, and I lost my deceased grandfather's favorite kelp knife that he had left me."

— u/OneDumbDiver

3. "Fifteen years ago, I was on a four-person dive. There were two novices, me with 80-ish dives, and the dive leader. We swam in a diamond shape, me bringing up the rear. But one of the novices was all over the place with a camera, burning through his air, swimming up a storm as it were. He lost grip on this shiny new camera, and it zipped upwards, got caught in his snorkel, but he couldn't see it. So he kicked out, hard, for the surface thinking, I assume, to chase down his camera and went right by me, upwards. I grabbed his fin and hauled him down. I signaled to him to stop and calm down. I untangled his camera and handed it to him. Only he didn't move. Instead, his reg fell out of his mouth, his eyes wide but unresponsive."

A hand reaching for another hand underwater

"I stuffed his reg back in and, unsure what to do, looked for the divemaster, but he was gone. For whatever reason, I couldn't reach my tank banger while holding on to the diver and his reg. I started to panic, so I decided to take him up quickly. He had epilepsy. I found this out at around 20 meters on our way up as he started to fit. He got caught up in my gear and kicked my inflator hose from my BCD, and I started venting air.

I honestly don't remember much of the next minutes. But I do remember letting him go and watching him slipping below me as air bubbles from my inflater hose rushed upward. The next thing I do remember is this constant beeping noise from my wrist. It was a cheap dive computer, but it had a depth alarm, which roused me from my panic as I dipped past 35 meters. My inflater was back in my BCD, and I still had air. But there was no one around. I started swimming up slowly, in shock, I think, when suddenly the dive leader went past me in a blast of current. He grabbed me as he went and hauled me up topside. I was relieved to see he had the epileptic novice diver in tow too.

On the boat, they called up a rescue boat from Mahle to come out and meet us. He was in decompression for a couple of days, I think. But he was fine. I know this because four days later, they caught him about to dive again at a different resort. I got air trapped in the pipe between my ear and throat, which was painful and gave us a scare, but ultimately I was fine."

— u/EvilFin

4. "I'm a rescue diver, and I was diving in a submerged blue hole in The Bahamas, and a diver went missing. After an hour or two of searching, I went back into the blue hole to see if there were any signs of him. I saw a glint of his watch on this arm sticking out near the bottom. I started descending to the bottom to recover the body, and on the way down, I realized that the 'bottom' was actually a school of sharks that must have been there for breeding."

A school of sharks

"There were so many sharks that they blocked the view of the actual bottom. I descended into the darkness, grabbed his arm, and started ascending. The sharks followed and were circling both of us. I had to take a break halfway at around 65 feet not to get the bends. I was scared shitless. I spent about eight minutes nearly 70 feet underwater surrounded by a school of sharks and a dead body in one hand."

— u/keithbah

5. "I was on a beach dive with my parents, having swum from the beach out to a small reef and then descending. It was only a few minutes after getting down to the reef that something started going on with my parents. My mother was agitated and clutching her chest. We surfaced, and she started spitting up dark liquid and was struggling to breathe. Fortunately, it was a busy beach, and after we inflated an emergency buoy, lifeguards rushed out and carried her back to the shore where an ambulance waited. It turned out she'd had swimmer's edema induced by the greater pressure."

"Things turned out fine, but having a medical emergency underwater in the ocean is a special level of scary. It wasn't exactly a deep dive, but it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life." 

— u/FirekeeperBlysse

6. "I was diving with a friend at about 82 feet when her old, beat-up BDC started to inflate on its own. This has happened to me before as well, but I just disconnected the air hose and carried on. She didn't think to do that and didn't have time to. She was upside down, kicking to try to stay down, but in the few seconds it took for me to realize, she was already at the surface."

Snorkel fins or flippers showing from snorkeler diving

“I followed her up, but not too quickly, and even so, my dive computer was beeping warnings at me. When we met up, I wondered why she didn't use her dump valve, especially since she was experienced and should know to do that. Then I saw that the string you pull to open the valve was missing, so it was literally impossible to dump the air when oriented that way. 

When you're diving, you want to ascend to the surface slowly. This is because, under pressure, your blood and tissues can hold more gasses (in particular inert nitrogen from your compressed air) dissolved in it than when you're at the surface. As you ascend to the surface, these dissolved gasses have to return to being gasses. If you're slow, you just breathe it out as you come up, but if you're too fast, they turn into bubbles of gas in your arteries and veins before they can be vented out. This causes embolisms as well as decompression sickness (aka the bends).

So check your gear before you use it! I was pretty worried that she would come down with the bends, but she was OK."

— u/Kytescall

7. "One time when my parents visited Mexico, they went diving and my mom was slightly lower down than my dad looking at the ocean floor. My mom had on a gold necklace that was floating in the water around her. It was a sunny day and a fairly shallow dive, so it was sparkling. My mom looked below at all the critters when my dad grabbed her and started frantically shaking her arm to get her attention. She looked up, and a barracuda was directly in front of her staring intently at the shiny necklace."

A barracuda

"She slowly moved up her hand to cover the necklace, and they slowly and calmly moved away from it, and it took off without bothering them anymore, but still pretty unsettling and taught my mom to be a little more aware of her surroundings when diving." 

— u/El-Ahrairah9519

8. "I got the bends once. I was careful and followed my charts and computer. I had appropriate depths and surface time, but I didn't drink enough water, so I was all out of whack. I felt fine until I got home and had a mild headache. Then I woke up, and it was just pain in my left arm, elbows, and fingers. I was then rushed to the hospital."

"The doctors got me hooked up and on fluids, checked my dive logs while the decompression chamber was set up, and then got me in there with a nurse. Eight hours in a tube about the length of a car but as wide as maybe a double bed? I was on oxygen and hooked up to an IV, and it was so loud, with all the air rushing in. As soon as I got to 'depth,' the pain vanished. It was crazy.

I’m fine now. But I wasn’t allowed to dive for a month, which sucked but hey. The dives were pretty great."

— u/LtCdrPetrel

9. "I was diving in a local pond with a group of much more advanced cave divers than I was. I am leading the dive, as to get used to the pressures and responsibilities of heading the procession, they are mentoring me. The known horrible visibility makes it impossible to navigate by compass, so we follow a line put by other divers. These lines go from one sunken item to another. So I know I am about to hit a small sunken boat but don't remember which one. There are a few similar in a row in the same state of decay. I am first in the group, and I get to the boat and see someone's black army boot sticking out from the inner quarters. It looks somewhat new, not like items you find on the bottom. It's hard to see due to too much muck in the water. So I touch the boot, thinking it is by itself, but it won't lift like it is attached to something heavy. I put my hand farther in and feel the leg continuing out, pants, the calf, and I see the second leg now."

Scuba Diver Explores Wreck In Undersea

"I turn around and show a sign for the emergency ascend to the group behind me. Everyone has a sour face, no one wants to surface, but it is a rule that if one says 'up,' others in a group must abort, no questions. They wanted me to explain with signs why, but what is a diver's sign for a corpse? I feel like I rush toward the surface, even though trying to stay calm and take time. So, we are on the lake's surface; I have this adrenaline rush, can't breathe enough. So, I tell them there is a body down there. I see rolling eyes from everyone once they see I am serious. I describe in detail what I saw, and we go down. Once we locate it, we don't know if we should go forward or backward, as there are several boats on the line, and who knows in which boat the body is in and how far we drifted while talking it out on the surface. Well, we find all boats before seeing the original one, of course. So, our customary leader goes into the boat’s cabin, and we wait. I'd say he was rather courageous at this point — went right in. Then he emerges from the cloud of muck and tells us all to surface.

So gluing information together from what we learned later on: It turns out the police or some other agency had body recovery training in the same lake the same day. When they went for lunch, they stuffed their fully dressed anatomically correct rubber doll in one of the sunken boats for a few hours for safekeeping."

— u/texasguy911

10. "I went diving the day before a hurricane on a small South Pacific island. Out of nowhere, a black and white venomous sea snake wrapped itself around my arm."

A black and white snake in the water

"Apparently, this happens from time to time before major storms. They can sense it and look for things heading towards the shore so that they don't have to put in so much effort to get out of the sea. As soon as I was in the shallows, it uncurled and headed up the beach where it hid under a breadfruit tree.

I thought I was going to get bitten to death by a snake at sea... It turns out I was just a taxi for a very calm but rather rushed reptile."

— u/Specialist_Celery

11. "When I was getting my open water diving license, we had to practice emergency procedures for if we found ourselves to be out of air. When we got to the bottom (around 10 meters or so), the instructor signaled to my buddy and I to simulate being out of air. So there are a few hand signals you’re supposed to do, like slicing your throat with your finger, etc. So after grabbing the instructor’s shoulder and having their alternate air supply in my mouth, we do the necessary hand signals and do the simulated slow and controlled emergency ascent, stopping halfway to avoid the bends. All is well, and we go back down. It’s now my buddy’s turn to simulate an emergency ascent. However, as they’re getting set up to do the drill, I noticed it getting harder and harder to breathe. I looked at my gauge, and it was completely empty."

"I was relatively relaxed at this point since I knew exactly the procedure to follow, having just practiced it. So I’m slicing my finger across my throat at the instructor to indicate I’m out of air, but she wags her finger to say no, slices her own throat, and then points to my buddy... It’s not my turn to do the drill; it’s my buddy’s turn.

At this stage, I’m getting no air at all. I start more frantically slicing my throat, which is met with more quizzical expressions and wags of the finger. So I grab my gauge, wave it at the instructor, and simultaneously grab their alternate air supply. The instructor then removes the air supply she’s breathing from and shoves it in my mouth (deviating from the procedure — this is when I start to panic a bit). 

The instructor then accidentally knocks my goggles off my face, and I’m greeted with icy cold water to the face and zero visibility. I’m to inflate my vest manually. I’ve got about a 20-meter swim to the jetty, so head off while the instructor goes back down for my buddy. My buddy, meanwhile, is completely freaking out at the bottom of the ocean. She ends up losing one of her fins. After getting back on the jetty, both my buddy and I sat out of the rest of the day’s activities. The instructor went back to collect my googles and the fin.

I hate to think how I would have reacted if I had run out of air 30 seconds later, me alone down there while my buddy and instructor were ascending. I did end up completing the course but only went diving once after that. I experienced an anxiety attack on my final dive and decided maybe scuba is not for me."

12. "I free dove to about 160 feet in Dean's Blue Hole in The Bahamas. I'd never really been past 100 feet free diving, but this was the perfect place to do it because there was no current, and I had ropes to keep me straight that allowed a slight pullback. The scary part is that you become pretty strongly and negatively buoyant after 60 feet, so you're basically hauling ass down while doing nothing and using very little air. So I'm dazed out a bit, and all of a sudden, I feel pressure, like my trachea was going to collapse."

A dive under water

"I wake up and realize I’ve counted to the line that’s around 160 feet or so. It was a very scary moment because I wasn’t sure if my body could take the depth or if I had gone too far and wouldn’t have enough air to get back up, which is a much slower and more air-intensive process."

— u/Jollerway

13. "I was 16 years old, scuba diving in Grenada at a shipwreck on my final five on one of my Padi qualifications. I think it was 20–30 meters underwater. The instructor told us that there could be sharks. When we were down, he swam through a hole, and I went to follow him. I then scraped the edge and cut open my hand, and I saw blood pouring out in a Jaws kind of style. I started breathing heavier, thinking a shark was now obviously going to come and eat me, but I continued swimming with my hand clenched into a fist as an attempt to stop the blood."

"“After about 10 minutes, everyone had split up to do a bit of exploring, and I checked the amount of air I had. It was in the red zone on the meter, pretty much empty. The only person I could see was my brother, who was more experienced than me. He saw it and quickly swam over to the instructor, who was quite far away. I was just staring at it, not knowing what to do, as in the moment I'd completely forgotten any of my training.

When the guy came over, it was all fine. I used his spare mask and swam back up to the surface using his air and then waited for me to get picked up by the guy in the boat as he went back down. It was all fine in the end, but I just remember being at the top waiting for a shark to come still and eat me. I think I was more scared of the sharks than the lack of air, even though that was the bigger problem. It was also annoying 'cause I missed out on a pretty gnarly eel that everyone else saw."

— u/milksy27

14. "I had two experiences with cave diving in one dive that stopped me from going into the water for almost a year. First, our guideline was snagged, and we lost it. We had to backtrack through a few chambers until we found it. Then my diving buddy and I both ran out of air. We planned a two-hour dive and had tanks for each of us that had double that amount, but finding the guideline took so long that we had to use our emergency tanks."

Someone cave diving in a dark underwater cave

"There is nothing scarier than not being sure how far left you had to swim in an enclosed space to the entrance with the knowledge (and the counting down in the back of your mind) that you had 50 breaths left."

15. "I was around 14 at the time and a relatively inexperienced diver; however, I was still comfortable diving. My dad, brother, and I were heading out to the dive spot about 45 minutes away and I started to feel sick. I went along and put my tank and fins on and got in the water. We got down to maybe 20 meters, and I began to puke into my regulator. I took out my regulator and kept puking into the water. As I was doing so, a bunch of fish just swarmed around my face, eating my vomit."

"At the moment, it was pretty scary to figure out what to do, as no one on my dive was within arm's reach. I purged my regulator, took a breath, then puked more and repeated as necessary. Still, no one noticed, and I went along with the rest of the dive. It turns out I actually had poorly timed food poisoning, and the seasickness just added to it."

— u/some-guy12

16. "When I was 13, we went drift diving out in Mexico on a very small boat with an outboard. After surfacing, there was no boat to pick us up. We were out of sight of land, and we bobbed around for a couple of hours. It was starting to get dark and pretty cold with the waves picking up. We also had no lights or any way to signal anyone."

A person floating in the middle of the ocean alone

"Out of nowhere, the boat appeared, and the guy seemed shocked. Apparently, he had accidentally found us on his way back in to find a friend with a boat to help look. I've always wondered how that could have gone down."

— u/sortaserious

17. "One of my first dives was in shitshow conditions. There was a strong current and so much sand/debris everywhere that visibility was at about 12 inches. For some reason, the divemaster was like, 'It'll be fine once we get below 40 feet.' We started descending on a guidewire, and after getting to about 55 feet, my brother and I could not see anyone else in the group. We waited at the bottom of the wire for 10 minutes, and after no one showed up, we started to think the rest of the group waited on the surface. We came up, and one guy from our group was at the buoy looking confused, and the boat was gone."

Underwater photo of woman floating in the sea and rays of light piercing through

"Turns out there were so many problems that the boat drove away so that the waves wouldn't throw it on top of us, but there were such large swells that the boat couldn't relocate us. We floated for about an hour before finally getting the boat's attention and being picked up. By far the worst motion sickness/ dehydration I've ever experienced."

— u/DankHolland

18. "We all got in a little speed boat and then took a short five-minute trip out to another boat that had all of the equipment. Instead of having a scuba mask to breathe out of, though, we had a very heavy helmet placed on our heads. I went first, and the procedure was straightforward. They put the helmet on me, and the second that it was on my body, I felt its weight forcing me to the bottom of the ocean. My friends followed suit, and then a scuba-diving man came down to be our guide. As I breathed, there was a constant, loud sound as water whined in through the tube. It was kind of annoying, but it meant that I was getting air, which is very good. That’s why it was so scary when the sound suddenly stopped. I was confused, but it quickly came back on after about four seconds, and I could breathe again. I rationalized it by assuming that my tank had run empty and they were switching it to a different one, no big deal."

"After about 10 minutes, the guide pointed at me and indicated that he wanted me to climb over the railing. It was hard to see any peripherals out of the masks, so it was easy to get lost. I looked back behind me to make sure that my friends saw where I went and didn’t get lost. We made eye contact, so I assumed we were all good and then turned back around to follow the guide. He had me walking in a very small path between two corals, so I went very slowly to make sure that I didn’t cut my legs on them. It was hard due to the strong underwater current, my unwieldy helmet, and an occasional tug by the air tube as I pulled it taut.

As I reached the guide, my air stopped again. I figured it was no big deal, like the previous two times, and continued. I thought to myself, Don’t panic. They always tell you not to panic. I panicked. I started taking quicker and quicker breaths, but I forced myself to stop that; I knew that was the worst thing I could do. I spun around to the guide and started pounding my fist on my chest: That was the sign for ‘I can't breathe!’ He seemed to notice and started walking away. I could only hope that he was taking me to the boat. I began to see that I was getting less and less oxygen with each breath, and water was starting to fill in my helmet. I had to look up to breathe what little air I had. I grabbed hold of the guide’s arm so that I wouldn’t lose him and also so that he would understand the gravity of the situation. I saw the boat’s ladder and knew that all I had to do was make it there and I would be OK.

I must have gotten some sort of adrenaline rush with the renewed hope because I almost forgot about my lack of air. I fumbled for the ladder for a few seconds before I grabbed it and started pulling myself up. As I broke the surface, air came rushing into my helmet, and I took a nice deep breath. Breathing had never felt better. That was definitely the scariest experience of my life; 1/10, would not recommend.”

— u/ComplexMuffin

19. "I know a guy who was out diving for crayfish/lobster; by the ocean, they hide under the rocks. As he was diving, a tiger shark emerged from a cave and rammed him, breaking his arm and ribs."

A deep diver swimming in front of a huge tiger shark

"He managed to climb up onto the rocks before anything else could happen. He said the shark was just testing him out."

— u/Storm_Cutter

20. "After a day of boat diving in Monterey Bay on the California coast, we had a night dive planned. I was there with two friends celebrating my birthday, and we were part of a larger group of divers. My friends were too tired for the night dive, and I was, too, but I got invited to buddy with another diver whose friends also decided to stay on the boat. So I was following my new buddy through the kelp when some of it caught on my tank. I tried to pull clear but managed to get tangled even more to the point where I was unable to move."

Underwater kelp

"I kept shining my light around, looking for my buddy, but he was nowhere to be seen. After what seemed like an hour but was probably just a few minutes, I felt some of the kelp loosen up and then saw that my buddy was cutting it off with his knife. I was so exhausted after struggling that when we got to the surface, he had to tow me back to the boat."

— u/duct_tape_jedi

21. "I had a dive buddy run out of air on me on a wreck in St. Lawrence. Thankfully we weren't actually inside the wreck, but the part that made it particularly challenging was that the wreck was right in the middle of the shipping lane with a really high current, so we couldn't just make an easy ascent to the surface. We had to navigate along with a series of lines laid out to give divers something to hang on to so they could pull themselves against the current on the path to the wreck and stabilize themselves during the swim back to the anchor line. We were making our exit, and everything was going fine. He was on my long 7-foot hose out in front, and I had a hand on his knee, so we were keeping in good contact. Then for one moment, I let go of his knee to deal with some gear, and in that split second, he came off the line and got caught in the current, ripping my regulator out of his mouth in the process."

"I saw him manage to grab hold of another one of the lines downstream, and he was hanging on for dear life, completely inverted, in a shipping lane, with no regulator in his mouth and no gas in his tank, flapping in the current like a flag in the wind. I bolted toward him as quickly as I could while still maintaining my own safety and gathered up the 7 feet of abandoned hose and regulator along the way. I caught up to him and managed to get the regulator back into his mouth, but since he was inverted, it went in upside down and, as a result, didn't breathe as it should. He fixed that himself but slipped off the line he was holding onto in the process. I managed to get a hold of him, but not without letting go of the line myself, so I ended up hooking both of my feet around the line to keep us both in place. Somehow I managed to pull us both back down to where we could grab hold of the line.

It was at this point that another diver in our group saw what was going on and assisted, and from there, we were able to get back to the boat without any further incident."

— u/doofthemighty

22. "I was maybe 15 feet down and saw the broken end of an anchor rope sticking out of the mud. I figured this might be valuable, grabbed the rope, planted my feet on either side of it, and pulled. Instead of the anchor coming up, my legs sank into the mud up to my mid-thigh. It took me almost all the air in my lungs to wiggle free again and get back to the surface."

"Later, I realized that if I hadn't been able to free myself, I simply would have died there under the water, and nobody would ever know what happened to me. Still scares the shit of me remembering that."

— u/capilot

23. "I was doing a deep dive around 200 inches on the coast of New York, and there were two others on a dive, a father and son. After spending about 10 minutes down there, I decided to go up to minimize decompression. After 50 minutes, the father and son still had not ascended, so the captain sent me down to check and make sure everything was OK. When I got down there, the son was stuck under a piece of metal, and his father was desperately trying to get him out. After I helped lift the metal off the son, I could immediately tell that they were in panic mode. Having a dangerously high amount of nitrogen in their body, the worst thing they could do would be to bolt up to the surface. If they did that, I knew they would be as good as dead because of the bends."

Scubadivers observing anthias moving around their home fire coral in Red Sea

"We went to the mooring line, and I began to start buddy breathing with the son and his father at the same time 'cause they were extremely low on air. After the father had a long breath, the son lost all control and bolted to the surface. His father tried to follow him, which I tried stopping by holding on to his BCD while my feet were hooked to the mooring. Unfortunately, he escaped my grip and launched after his son. 

Up at the surface, everyone knew that things were seriously wrong. The swells were upwards of 10 feet, and it was challenging to get back on board. By the time the father and son were on the boat, the father was basically dead; after his entire body went numb, he loss consciousness. The coast guard came via helicopter, but the father was already dead. The captain demanded that they should just take the son and immediately take him to the chamber. They refused and wasted the precious time on putting the dead father in the chopper too, which was extremely difficult cause of his weight and the swaying. By the time they brought the son to the chamber, he had already died too."

— u/corneliuspildershidt

24. "I was divemaster on a live-a-board in The Bahamas in 1992. The boat was a large, steel crew boat converted for diving. There were no mooring buoys back then, so we would take a line down with a wreck hook on it, wrap it around the base of a coral head, and hook it back to itself. So I took the line down around the coral head and hooked it off on itself. I laid off and watched it for about a minute, and, satisfied it was going to hold, and it was not wrecking the coral, I started to rise over the coral head to ascend back to the surface. Just as I crossed over the top of the coral head, the boat lurched, and the wreck hook broke loose, snapped around the circle like a rocket, and headed straight to me like it was shot out of a canon. I was looking down at it when it happened and, even so, had zero opportunity to do a damned thing but watch it unfold in what seemed like slow motion."

"For some time, I had been in the habit of clipping my dive computer to my BC, across my chest. It kept it from dragging behind me, bouncing off stuff, and it was always close at hand for me to check. By nothing but sheer luck, the wreck hook got me in the chest, dead center on my dive computer. It gutted the dive computer, bounced off my face mask right at the left eye, pulling the mask off my face, and went on its merry way.

I had not a single scratch or bruise. I caught my mask in the water, and my dive computer was destroyed but didn't free flow. I could have taken that hook right in the heart or in the left eye, or it could have left my air supply compromised. Somehow, I dodged all three outcomes and made a safe ascent, which is not to say I didn't suck down most of the air in my tank, hyperventilating, before I got there."

— u/spiel2001

25. And finally, "On my 17th birthday, my dad took me spearfishing. I was about 75 feet down at the top of a 45-foot wreck, so the bottom was about 115 feet down when I shot the biggest amberjack of my life. I was stupid and wrapped the line from my spear around my wrist so that I could pull the fish to bring him to me on the bottom. It was much bigger than me and started flying to the surface. So I'm going up and down, and my dive computer was screaming at me to slow down. My nitrogen levels were rising faster than they were supposed to. Finally, he swam back down toward the wreck we were on, and I managed to snag my gun on a beam from the rusting hull. I took a second to breathe and realized how close to blacking out I was. My ears felt like they were going to explode from all the pressure changes, and my mask was filling with blood where I'd burst a blood vessel in my nose during the fight. I should've died."

"The fight had worn down the fish, so he wasn't able to snap the given a hard pull. I pulled my dive knife and started swimming down the line, working toward him. He was drawing lazier and weakening circles at the end of the 20-foot line. As I neared him, I saw it was inches away from shaking the spear and being lost forever. I had to pull on the spear and pin him to the sandy bottom with the pointy end of the spear. The moment I touched him, the fish went ballistic. It was like our fight was starting all over — this time in close quarters. I just wrapped my legs around him like a rodeo star and tried to find a sweet spot for my knife. I had my knees locked around the spear with the fish as a kabab in the middle. I took one jab, and it deflected off his skull. I took one more, and somehow it stuck; he went from a bucking bronco to dead in zero time. I was just done.

I was low on air and was exhausted. I just wrapped the line around the spear gun and left the spear in the fish — knife in the skull. I worked my way up as slowly as possible and took the largest decompression (safety) stop that my remaining air would allow. We had over 65 pounds of meat from that fish, ate like kings for days.”

— u/Tampaburn

Do you have any horrifying diving stories or know of anyone that does? Feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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    Reddit users reveal the behind-the-scenes secrets and incidents that happened on cruise ships, from fires and jumps to toilets and corpses. Read their stories and see the reactions of passengers ...

  14. Crew Horror Stories

    So: I was wondering if anyone else has crew horror stories they may wish to share. Feel free to change the names to protect the (not so) inncocent . 09-09-2010, 12:09

  15. The spookiest ghost ship stories from around the world

    BOAT rounds up the best spooky stories of haunted ghost ships through the years, from the disappearing crew of Carroll A. Deering to the mystery of Mary Celeste. Learn about the legends, myths and facts behind these eerie tales of the sea.

  16. The most outrageous superyacht guest requests

    The most outrageous superyacht guest requests. 8 December 2021. If you've been watching the dramatic season nine of TV show Below Deck, then you'll know that superyacht charter guests can be quite demanding clients. We hear from yacht captains and crew as they talk about the scandalous stories of their time on board and reveal the most ...

  17. Honest Pros and Cons of Working on Large Yachts : r/sailingcrew

    plopsicle. •. Hello I recently transitioned from skipper on smaller sail yachts (40-50') to working as crew on large motor yachts (150-200ft). YOU WILL CLEAN ALL DAY EVERY DAY. This is the job. It is a tedious and mind numbing job. You will learn to clean things that are already spotless. You will work A LOT.

  18. 4 True Disturbing Cruise ship horror stories

    4 True Disturbing Cruise ship horror stories | Mr.Nine ScaresThese disturbing cruise ship experiences reveal the terrifying events that passengers and crew h...

  19. 9 Superyacht Crew Share What It's Like Working for a Billionaire

    Some crew members get lucky working for generous yacht owners, while others get treated like the help. "It's hard work and long days when they are on board," said Martin, the captain of a 155-foot ...

  20. I work as a chef on a superyacht, I've been doing it for over ...

    Weirdly enough, salads and sushi. Every wife of the owner loves that stuff. I tend to cook a lot of Asian stuff for crew which goes down well, Hoison Duck steam buns, Okonomoyaki and ginger wagyu dumplings etc. Memorable moment: trying to save Marc Anthony's boat from burning down a few years ago in Miami. Long story short, it sank.

  21. 25 Terrifying Deep Diver Horror Stories

    Read 25 terrifying accounts of deep diving accidents, encounters with sharks, and near-death experiences from Reddit users. These stories will make you afraid of the ocean and grateful for your life.

  22. These boats are some of the most toxic workplaces I've ever seen

    Who hasn't been the victim of inappropriate comments from the opposite (or even same sex) etc or a bitchy boss who plays favourites or workmates who are cliquey. The harassment side seems more prominent on BD because I think some of the charter guests think they are above the crew and that the crew are there to put up and shut up.

  23. Horror Stories on Board: Below Deck Puke

    Witness the aftermath of a wild night on the yacht as a crew member discovers their roommate's messy surprise. #GoForTheHandful #yachtie #yachts #belowdeck #crewlife #topbunk #puke #juststewit ... below deck puke, yachtie horror stories, crew life, top bunk mishaps, yacht parties, vomit on toothbrush. This information is AI generated and may ...