‘Below Deck’ Sets Sail Again With More Drama on the High Seas

Below Deck - Season 3
Virginia Sherwood/Bravo
BELOW DECK -- Pictured: (l-r) -- (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/Bravo) Highlights

Break out the Dramamine, because Below Deck—Bravo’s docuseries about the upstairs/downstairs antics of life aboard a luxurious super-yacht—is setting sail for Season 3. This time around, the salty lot will be circling the Bahamas on the SS Eros with five new employees in tow, and, according to returning chief stewardess Kate Chastain, they’ll barely have any time to get their sea legs before they embark. “It’s very difficult getting to know your crew while you’re doing a charter, because you don’t know who you can depend on,” says Chastain, best remembered for such hits as her self-described “bitchy resting face” and the bold decision to arrange one particularly challenging guest’s stateroom blanket into the shape of male genitalia.

Among the freshmen who’ll be rocking the boat are Leon Walker, a chef with an unpalatable ’tude—“He’s an aggressive conversational bulldozer, and he acts like he’s on Hell’s Kitchen or something,” Chastain says—and Raquel “Rocky” Dakota, the feisty third stew who thinks menial tasks like laundry are beneath her. “From Day 1, she didn’t want to do her job,” says Chastain. “She sought out drama, and she has a constant need for attention.”

Hey, she’s not the only one. Per usual, the moneyed clients arrive with sky-high expectations, such as in the premiere, when a shirtless, champagne-guzzling tycoon named Steve requests a foam party on the ship. Any crew member who endangers the communal tip by falling short will be booked on the next flight outta paradise by the ever-crusty Capt. Lee Rosbach. “He hands out more plane tickets than a travel agency this season,” Chastain says. And how does Chastain herself perform on the service front? “I can’t change my face, so I’m trying to use my words to be nicer to guests,” she says. “And I was a little stressed out about how I was going to top my d–k blanket, but I did manage to do some creative folding that I’m quite proud of.”

Below Deck, Season premiere, Tuesday, August 25, 9/8c, Bravo