‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’: Paget Berry Says Illegal Drugs on Board Means the Captain Could Go to Jail

Paget Berry from Below Deck Sailing Yacht shared how serious it is to bring illegal drugs on a yacht.

Berry shared exclusively with Showbiz Cheat Sheet that the crew could lose their license and the captain could even be sent to prison. The grave nature is why the crew is on alert when it appears that a guest may be using cocaine in the bathroom during dinner service. Both chief stew Jenna MacGillivray and deckhand Chris Miller suspect one guest was using illegal drugs.

Miller confides in MacGillivray saying that he saw something suspicious underneath a guest’s nose earlier in the day. “If guests do bring drugs on board, it can put us all at risk of being charged,” MacGillivray says in a confessional. “So if I suspect something and Chris suspects something and we didn’t say anything about it, the onus is on us.”

Berry teased the moment will be ‘big’

While Berry couldn’t reveal specifics, he shared that the last two episodes will be explosive. “What I can say is it is a big moment for everybody on board,” he says. “So you’re going to have to find out what happens, but yeah, it’s a big one.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Below Deck has dealt with drugs if it indeed turns out that the guest brought an illegal substance on board. The first charter guests on the flagship season of Below Deck brought cocaine on board. Stew Kat Held found the substance while cleaning the cabins and told chief stew Adrienne Gang.

Captain Lee Rosbach confirmed that the guests brought drugs on board, turned the yacht around, and bounced the guests. “There were two [groups of worst charter guests] that come to mind, not counting the druggies that I threw off the boat the first time,” Rosbach said during a Stars Marketing Group event in Florida in January. “They didn’t see that sh*t coming their way, did they?

Adding, “They hold the record. They were on the boat for less than 22 hours and they were gone,” he said. “I kept their money!” At the time the crew gave Held somewhat of a hard time because while the guests paid the fare, they didn’t leave a tip.

Illegal drugs on a boat are never taken lightly (but is nothing new)

Guests may not realize that bringing illegal drugs on a yacht is illegal, even though the boat is being privately chartered. “Unfortunately there is that element in yachting,” Berry explains. “Since I started 10 years ago as a teenager, it was readily around the crew, readily around sole owners. Obviously they’ve got the money and everything. And it is a shame. It does wiggle its way in there sometimes. But if you’re smart and level headed, you know what to do and what not to do.”

Because illegal substances carry devastating consequences. “If any sort of substances or anything illegal is found on board a boat, the captain can go to jail, his license, the crew, we could lose our licenses. The boat gets impounded. It’s not funny.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that guests (or crew) learned their lesson about bringing illegal substances on a boat. The Below Deck Mediterranean trailer teases that Captain Sandy Yawn may have found drugs on board her boat during season 5.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht is on Mondays at 9/8c on Bravo.