Below Deck’s Bobby Worked for Shady Captain Who Lied About Boat Damage and Ran Aground Multiple Times
Parsifal III briefly ran aground on Below Decking Sailing Yacht, which had Captain Glenn Shephard worried that the boat sustained massive, not to mention expensive damage. And while the boat was severely scratched, it was still seaworthy.
Bobby Giancola, from Below Deck Mediterranean Seasons 1 and 2 recently shared that he’s been on a boat that ran aground more than once, but rather than report the damage, the shady captain he worked for lied and told no one.
Below Deck Med’s Bobby Giancola was on a boat that ran aground – multiple times
“What’s also scary is something that I’ve been in personally is the captain hit a bridge, ran aground, you know, multiple times,” Giancola recalled on Malia White’s Total Ship Show podcast. “And because he was being paid so well, so he didn’t want to get his ticket hit and didn’t want to tell the boss. [So he paid for it] it was out of his own pocket, he paid for it.”
“So he never reported it!” White exclaimed. The captain kept the damage incident to himself but eventually, the owner found out the boat had been damaged, Giancola shared.
Malia White says boat damage cover-ups aren’t that uncommon
“Imagine being an owner and not knowing that your boat ran aground or hit a bridge,” White said. She wondered what happens when the boat is being inspected and suddenly it is brought to the owner’s attention that the boat had been damaged.
“Unfortunately, yeah, Bobby is right,” White added. “Unfortunately, I’ve heard so many horror stories like that, like captains like hitting a reef or like running aground or damaging the boat, like hitting it and then just not reporting it and trying to get like deck crew to cover up the scratch or something. And you’re like, ‘Yeah, you didn’t just put a tiny scratch in it. There’s a f***ing chunk missing.'”
Boat repairs are expensive
Parsifal III sustained damage last season of Below Deck Sailing Yacht when the hydraulics failed and the sailing yacht crashed into the dock. “That particular [accident], I felt it,” Shephard told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “And when I’m feeling the impact I’m fearing the worst and thinking ‘Oh my God this is really, really bad,’ he said. “In the end, it’s not quite as bad as I feared. So I may have overreacted a little bit. But yeah, it’s pretty serious.”
“I’ve had issues before,” he added. “I’ve never had an issue with the result like we had. And you can tell I was quite upset about it. I’ve never had that kind of result, but I’ve definitely had issues before where I’ve lost everything. The engines shut down. I have no thrusters, nothing. And that can be a little nerve-wracking.”
Shephard revealed that it cost about $20,000 to repair the damage. “We were lucky as the paint company owed us a respray of the transom,” he shared in a Reddit thread. “A repair like that would probably run $10k-$20k. Nothing is cheap on these boats. It could have been a lot worse. That is always covered by insurance. The boats are well insured.”
