But some of the other characters you saw on TV this season, Captain Sandy would never hire. And this is a woman who believes in people, in giving them multiple chances. She once fired and rehired someone three times. (“I just said, ‘I’m not giving up on you,’” Captain Sandy recalled.) This is a woman who so believes in pitching in and helping people learn that, in season four, she jumped into the kitchen to help Mila Kolomeitseva carve Parma ham—and did so with a smile on her face. And this was after Mila prepared college-dorm-style nachos as a legitimate meal for the yacht’s guests in one of the franchise’s most abhorrent story arcs.
One Wellington crew member whom Captain Sandy would not hire in real life: Ferrier, the show’s longtime first stew, who left in dramatic, unprecedented fashion this season after being reported for having unregistered drugs aboard. (Ferrier said on Twitter that the Valium was prescription and the other substance was CBD.) “I don’t not like her,” Captain Sandy said of her former costar, whose exit led to the most intense audience reaction in the franchise’s history. “But is she someone I would ever hire on a boat? Not at all.”
Many viewers sided with Ferrier—who, as the program’s chief stewardess, served as one of the few recurring cast members amid an ever-changing sea of crew. She was the Jennifer Lawrence lookalike who, sure, admitted to being over yachting, but reliably provided a kind of lovable sarcasm even as her work ethic waned. Ferrier was, as one viewer put it, “dragging ass”—but who isn’t sick of their job in 2020?
Captain Sandy, that’s who.
“I would hire someone who wants to be there,” Captain Sandy clarified, envisioning a world in which she chose Below Deck’s crew. “Someone who does the grunt work with their team—someone who doesn’t just show up to serve the guests. That’s degrading. I want someone who’s invested.”
Captain Sandy pointed out that Hannah, unlike Malia and Bugsy, did not continue working on boats between Below Deck: Mediterranean seasons. “After filming, Hannah would never go work on a boat…that’s a big difference.”
“You know what I think, honestly?” Captain Sandy added. “I think Hannah self-sabotaged because she did not want to do this. She wanted out; she just didn’t know how to leave—that’s my opinion. And guess what: Now she is pregnant, and has everything that she’s wanted. The one thing I know about Hannah, because I listened to her: She wanted kids. She did not want to do this job. She hated the job, but she kept coming back for the money.” Captain Sandy gets it: “I’ve been that way in relationships—I never know how to leave them.” Captain Sandy also said that she reached out to Hannah after hearing that she was pregnant, but never heard back.
Captain Sandy is in a tricky position on Below Deck: Mediterranean—a Bravo reality show, sure, but one with serious consequences. She didn’t survive addiction, cancer, and, again, literal pirates to referee 20-somethings’ toxic flings or watch while a chef melts down over having to slice cucumbers. Yet God led her here. So when it was brought to Captain Sandy’s attention that Hannah had unregistered drugs onboard—a perfect Bravo story arc—she had to bring the kind of buzzkill caution she uses in her real-life maritime career, where she had faced disasters at sea and the nightmarish legal cases that ensue.
“I didn’t fire Hannah because she had marijuana on the boat. I fired Hannah because she’s untrustworthy,” Captain Sandy reiterated. “If I would’ve taken Hannah to sea and something catastrophic happened and I needed her to do her job as a crew member, handling someone’s life…and she couldn’t do that because she was high…” Captain Sandy trailed off, thinking about the disastrous consequences. “I fired Hannah because I’m responsible for lives. I’ve been in court before…You hold your hand up, you swear in a court of law, you’re not going to lie.”