Last night we officially sent the cast of Below Deck on their final charter and we waved farewell with Tahitian flower crowns in our hair. Don’t I wish! Actually far from sunsets, the entire affair took place in the dark, sordid Watch What Happens Live clubhouse, with the disco’d up cast perched on uncomfortable stools which are clearly the castoffs from one of Lisa Vanderpump‘s collaborations with Nick Alain gone wrong! First off Andy Cohen clears the suspense by stating that Caroline Bedol and Chandler Brooks won’t be joining them. That statement made it pretty much apparent that the reunion would be boring as everyone else was BFF by the time the season ended. Several of them are still close friends today! Seriously, though, I had forgotten Caroline and Chandler were even on the show this season was so busy. Other than Rhylee Gerber they were the sole sources of drama in the first half of the season. Everyone has opinions on why Chandler was such an utter disaster. The basic consensus is that he was overwhelmed by running a deck crew that wasn’t full of well-oiled seamen (meaning dealing with Rhylee). Also, he couldn’t cope with the cameras in his face. Rhylee blames Chandler completely for causing all of her outbursts, but she also completely blames Ross Inia for causing all her outbursts towards him. Even though Rhylee says she apologized and meant it – she didn’t as she’s still not taking accountability for basically being impossible to work with. Captain Lee Rosbach comments that Ross let Rhylee get away with too much by catering to her tantrums. True that! Ross is so conflict-averse. He just tiptoed around Rhylee to everyone’s detriment. Lee does agree that Chandler mismanaged Rhylee and was “a complete prick” to her. Adrian Martin is still in touch with Chandler. He wants nothing to do with the show and is no longer giving it any attention. I wonder if Chandler is still with Jamie from Below Deck Med? Obviously, the matter of Caroline has Kate Chastain and Josiah Carter on the major defense. Especially after Andy plays never-before-seen footage from Caroline’s last day, which features Kate and Josiah crouched outside her door accusing her of leaving because she has a herpes outbreak. UM, WTF. Seriously, seriously gross behavior. Kate and Josiah acknowledge that it wasn’t their finest hour (y’a think!). I’m noticing a theme here because they also blame Caroline for “pushing them to the limit” until they snapped. Kate and Josiah clearly have a party line of standing unified. They both claim to actually really like Caroline as a person. They insist their issue with her was that she didn’t do her job. Look, I FULLY 100% agree that as a stew Caroline was more useless than a herpes outbreak. And she absolutely should’ve been fired for incompetence and laziness. HOWEVER, Kate and Josiah went way too far. They made many of their attacks personal. I also agree that Caroline was totally over-sensitive, and like Chandler a horrific fit for this intense of an environment. Laura Betancourt tries to defend Caroline – mildly. Sensing her place in the cast next season is in jeopardy she quickly shuts her mouth with an insincere grin, and is empathetic to what Kate and Josiah had to deal with. See – if you go against Kate’s grain you’re gonna get accused of being a Muppet with herpes of the foot. At least Captain Lee looks disgusted and shocked by the unseen footage. It is interesting watching Kate squirm as Captain Lee attempts to make excuses he clearly doesn’t believe Kate deserves. Lee lists his biggest regret of the season as how he handled the situation between Kate and Caroline. They both agree it would’ve been beneficial for all three of them to sit down to talk. Andy has spoken to Caroline. She maintains that things were far worse than was shown on the show. So, sayonara Caroline, let’s move on to your replacement: Laura. Unsurprisingly her relationship with Ashton Pienaar didn’t last. They are now “dear friends.” Very. FIRMLY. dear friends. We never get an answer for why though because ANDY DIDN’T ASK. Um, wtf! Laura wishes she wouldn’t have exploded on Kate that one fateful charter, while guests dined upstairs. She too blames being pushed to the brink by Kate’s bitchiness and unfriendliness. Laura even blames herself for creating that strained environment by acting so arrogantly when she initially came on board. Kate and Laura eagerly say they want to work together again. Do I sense a plan to stack the deck of next season’s interior crew?! To avoid any potential Rocky’s or Caroline’s? Laura doesn’t know why she was acting so unbelievably annoying when she joined the crew. Um, producers? Also we still never got clarity or proof of whether or not she was actually a chief stew of a similarly-sized vessel. Adrian apologizes for all his lewd comments. He insists that he really had no idea he was making Laura uncomfortable because this was just a small fraction of their relationship. Laura never told Kate it was happening, but if Kate had known she definitely would have confronted Adrian. Adrian stands by not realizing he was being offensive, but come on dude… I know he just crawled out of a Caribbean seashell yesterday, where he turned into a merman on borrowed legs, but he even sexually harassed a sea slug! I think he definitely knew that kind of language was inappropriate in the workplace. Even a workplace as licentious as a super yacht! It also turns out that Ross is the drunken octopus, not Ashton! While intoxicated Ross did way more than just kiss Rhylee – he even attempted to make-out with Kate, but she is made from marble and has about the same amount of sex appeal as the inflatable slide. However, Ross, well his standards are loooow… So low! I’m guessing thing never worked out with his son’s mom, because he also admits to hanging out with Krystal – their final charter guest – and occasionally engaging in a friends with benefits situation.<doc-sep>Below Deck Reunion Season 6 Episode 17 Editor’s Rating 3 stars * * * « Previous Next » Photo: Bravo It’s that time of year when we get another chance to answer one of life’s great questions: Can the Below Deck cast sustain an hour of television by simply talking and sitting, without being forced to perform an endless sequence of chores? Maybe? As usual, the most interesting things about the reunion were the outfits and the aggressive bronzer. After watching these people for 16 weeks in polo shirts and skorts, seeing them in full glitter jumpsuits with bell sleeves (get it, Rhylee) is a real treat, a level of fashion Instagram influencers know not of. Let’s review their outfits and the few things they said one by one: Rhylee Rhylee wins for fashion, hands down, in a slick of black glitter with bell-bottoms and flared sleeves. The sleeves got lost in the show, but true fans will note that in Instagram shots, the sleeves might as well have been their own little wrist trains, a metaphor for Rhylee’s personality, which wears a train of suspicion and a cloak of aggression. The montage of Rhylee is set to angry horn music, and her word of the night is “reactionary,” which is her way of saying that every time she felt marginalized or unhappy, which was all the time, she fought with people. We also learn that she was never attracted to Chandler, who was the only member of the deck team who didn’t try to make out with her, and that Ross actually made a pass at her twice, though only once on TV. “Every one of them had problems with me, and every one of them came to me for lovin’,” she says. Lee says the way Rhylee treated her bosses “sucked. It totally sucked.” I know Rhylee has a job and isn’t the sort of woman who languishes all day in a debt-financed manse, eager to keep herself busy by fighting with other women on camera, but has Bravo considered her for Housewives? I’d like to see this network exploit her reactionariness in other formats. Ross Ross wears a perfectly fine forest green shirt, which is in keeping with his perfectly fine presence on the show. He explains that his recent arrest was “a big misunderstanding.” (Andy: “It always is.”) He clearly has something going on with Krystal, the charter guest Kate was going to have Josiah spray with a hose, but tries to deny it. Apparently he’s also kissed Kate. Tyler I didn’t even write down what Tyler wore because he was so forgettable this hour. I think the he said one word after Andy asked how he and Rhylee would end up that night: “Clubbin’.” Josiah Josiah really lucked out this season. He came off pretty damn well and looked fantastic the whole time. For the reunion, he serves up great hair with a deep moss velvet tux, worn casually without a tie. Maybe it’s his accent, but he manages to shit-talk people to their faces on the reunion (or behind their backs, if you’re Caroline or Chandler) in a way that doesn’t seem that mean. He says that Chandler would have been fine working for a single owner and not charter guests. He says he and Kate liked Caroline but she didn’t do her job. He expresses regret at the way they treated her when she quit, and how they made fun of her for leaving by accusing her of having herpes, which was really mean. Kate Kate displays a remarkably sophisticated fashion sense for a Bravo reunion show. Enveloped by a swishy, long-sleeved shirtdress devoid of the Bravolebrity fashion vices of glitter, sequins, and lace, she projects the authority of someone who has done this before and wasn’t taken advantage of by a stylist’s rack of clothing options. She says she regrets how she treated Caroline and that she was “bewildered” by Laura’s outburst. (Lee: “That’s a good term. Bewildered.”) Laura says Kate could have been nicer, but Kate says there’s not enough time to be nice. And so, she will presumably sail into another season, a fan favorite with perfectly puffy hair and enough remorse to seem human but not so much as to become boring television. Caroline Caroline did not attend the reunion but spoke to Andy before they sat down to film. He asks Captain Lee what’s up with lots of stews not getting along with Kate? And Captain Lee, who is friends with Kate, says that all those stews just can’t do their jobs. Rhylee reveals that she found Caroline to be “very distraught all day, every day.” Ashton says he had conversations with her “on the bow” and she “just wasn’t coping.” Though Kate and Josiah say they regret that they weren’t always nice to her, Kate says Caroline was the bully and “I don’t think I started it.” Bravo plays the footage of Kate and Josiah accusing Caroline of having herpes, which was apparently what Caroline was alluding to on Twitter when she said the scene of them trying to drive her off the boat with dance music wasn’t nearly as bad as what actually happened. Though Captain Lee admits he should have handled the situation with Caroline better, he acknowledges that the herpes scene makes him uncomfortable. But he ultimately says that Caroline couldn’t do the job. Caroline puts Captain Lee, Kate, and Josiah in the awkward position of trying to not seem like complete monsters while defending their odious actions toward her, when she probably is a person who was just very poorly suited to reality television all along. Chandler Also not there to speak for himself is Chandler, footage of whom is thrown into a montage set to dodo flute music. The cast talks about whether or not he’s a capable bosun, and they all agree he’s a nice person and seems like he knows what he’s doing, but is not cut out to lead the deck crew.<doc-sep>Looks like she kept in touch with at least one Below Deck crew member after that memorable charter. Charter guest Krystal definitely made waves with the M/Y Seanna crew — and even her own friends — during the last charter of Season 6 of Below Deck. But even after her arguments with her besties and her "shame cocoon," Krystal still found a friend in one of the Below Deck Season 6 crew members. It was revealed during the Below Deck Season 6 reunion that Ross Inia brought Krystal and one of her friends as his guests during his appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on December 4, 2018. When Andy Cohen asked if Ross and Krystal are seeing each other, the bosun said, "Oh, we just hang out every now and then. So yeah, we keep in touch." Andy then asked Ross if he and Krystal were "friends with benefits," and the yachtie said he wouldn't put it like that exactly. "Just benefits," Ross said with a laugh. Though Ross didn't provide any intel on what Krystal thought of her Below Deck experience this season, Kate Chastain made a prediction in the Below Deck Season 6 After Show, which you can check out, above. "If she's not embarrassed, then she'll be very spoiled. She has no consequences," Kate explained. "Can you be embarrassed if there are no consequences?" Good question, Kate. Look back on Krystal's memorable trip aboard the M/Y Seanna, below.<doc-sep>"It was a big misunderstanding," the Below Deck Season 6 bosun said. A few weeks prior to the filming of the Below Deck Season 6 reunion, it was reported that Ross Inia had been arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida. The bosun briefly addressed the incident at the beginning of the sit-down with Andy Cohen Tuesday night. "It was just me and a couple of mates having a night out. That's pretty much all I can say. I can't really elaborate on it," he shared. "It was a big misunderstanding."' Since this season of Below Deck ended, Ross has focused on friends, family, and his yachting career. "I went back to New Zealand, spent time with my friends, family. Did a couple of maritime courses," he told us backstage at the taping of the reunion, which you can view, above. "Came back to Florida. Trying to spend as much time as I can with my little one [his 5-year-old son Kai]." Ross also told us at the reunion that he has kept in touch with everyone from this season, "but mostly Ashton [Pienaar]." "We tend to talk on a regular occasion," he said. "Every second day, we're always writing something back-and-forth to each other." Ashton put it like this when talking about his alive-and-well bromance with Ross during the reunion: "He's like a girlfriend. If I don't check in on him every day, he gets upset." Oh, these two. Find out who the rest of the crew keeps in touch with from this season, below.<doc-sep>
"Every time I tell the story, I get all super anxious," the cameraman said at the Below Deck Season 6 reunion. The scariest moment in Below Deck history could have had the worst possible outcome: death. Ashton Pienaar went overboard this season after the line used to tow the tender wrapped around his ankle and dragged him into the water. The deckhand was just seconds away from his foot being severed by the taut line and bleeding out to death in the water before anyone could reach him to bring him back to safety on the boat. Fortunately, that didn't happen. That was thanks in part to Brent Freeburg, a cameraman for this season of Below Deck, who, when he saw Ashton fall into the water, immediately sprung into action, dropping his camera and helping to get that tow line loose so that the deckhand’s ankle was free and he could swim to the tender for safety. When Brent appeared as a surprise guest during the Below Deck Season 6 reunion Tuesday night, he made it clear that it required a team effort to save Ashton's life. "Well, I would say that it wasn't just me. I've been getting a lot of attention, for sure. But it was Rhylee [Gerber] who made the first call to [Captain Lee Rosbach], Captain took the boat out of gear, Ross [Inia] who helped untie the lines," he explained. "And so it was really collectively all of us that came together." Ashton embraces Brent as he makes a surprise appearance at the Below Deck Season 6 reunion. Then Brent broke down exactly what was going through his mind as he made the decision to stop doing his job as a camera operator to step in and try to save Ashton. "Ross was working on undoing a caught line on one of the fenders behind me, and I noticed that Rhylee and Ashton were down on the deck, on the swim deck, and I just saw him go in. And so I immediately went down there, and then basically sussed [out] the situation in moments. How do we get ropes off the, do I dive in? Does somebody dive in, and try to unhook him? No, that's not gonna work. Is there a knife? No," Brent explained. "So I just looked at the cleats, and I realized that that was the solution. And I started doing that, and I think Ross had come down at that point and was just like, 'Let's get these lines off.' And then after we got them off, pick up the camera and start shooting again." Brent reveals how he saved Ashton's life during the Below Deck Season 6 reunion. According to Brent, Ashton was under the water for about 25 seconds, "just struggling himself, trying to get untied." Those must have been the longest 25 seconds of Ashton's life. "I had got to that point where I had mentally prepared that my foot was gonna be ripped off. That's the force that was already around my ankle," Ashton said during the reunion. "So if it was 2 seconds longer, my foot was ripped off." Brent got visibly emotional as Ashton recounted that part of the accident. "Every time I tell the story, I get all super anxious," Brent said. Captain Lee praised Rhylee for her quick thinking during the accident. "If Rhylee hadn't said 'man overboard’ in that instance, it was all over," he said. The Below Deck boss also said this incident is right at the top of the list of the scariest moments in his 35-year yachting career. "It's never, ever happened in my career before, and hopefully it'll never happen again," he shared. The Stud of the Sea also dubbed Brent "a stud." The two then shared a huge hug. Ashton ended the reunion by opening up about the enormous impact that the whole experience has had on his life. "It was a massive wake-up call. I think you get complacent, you start forgetting things on deck," he said. "It's a dangerous job we do, and I think it was just a massive wake-up call." Captain Lee goes in-depth on how Brent and the rest of the crew prevented this accident from becoming a tragedy, below.