Ciara Duggan and Paget Berry on ‘Below Deck Med’ Drama: ‘This Is Why Boats Don’t Hire Couples’
Ciara Duggan from Below Deck Sailing Yacht admits she is surprised that bosun Malia White from Below Deck Mediterranean pulled rank in order to bunk with boyfriend and new chef Tom Checketts.
White essentially demanded that chief stew Hannah Ferrier move cabins to accommodate the couple. “We were like, ‘Oh my God this is why boats don’t hire couples,'” Duggan told the team from Bravo Confessionals.
Fiancé Paget Berry agreed. “It shouldn’t happen,” he said. “Television or not you have to maintain sort of a good image for the other thousands of couples out there who work in yachting.”
“It makes us all look like, ‘Ah we’re a couple we get the frigging master suite.’ It’s not a good look,” Berry added.
Does the chef have rank over the crew on cabin arrangements?
Although Duggan was a deckhand on Below Deck Sailing Yacht, she’s also a chief stew. Berry is the first mate, which is one of the highest-ranking positions on a yacht. Viewers were told Checketts was given cabin preference on the yacht because as the chef he could essentially call the shots.
But Berry and Duggan disagreed. “[Room assignments] has nothing to do with the chef,” Berry laughed. “The cabin arrangements are normally down to the chief stew, that’s what I thought.”
“Usually, like on Parsifal as well, before Jenna [MacGillivray] arrived, I was the one who decided who was going to go where,” Duggan explained. “And then on the last [boat] we were on, it just fell naturally who was gonna go where because there wasn’t a ton of crew. But normally it’s the chief stew and if there are any questions about it, it’s up to the chief stew and the captain to decide.”
Berry and Duggan worked together and didn’t share a cabin
Duggan sparked conversation about room assignments when she tweeted that she and Berry didn’t share a cabin for six months and didn’t have a meltdown. “Fun fact: Paget and I have just spent the last 6 months working on a yacht on which we couldn’t share a cabin,” she tweeted.“As First Mate and Chief Stew and we survived.”
Jenna MacGillivray, who was the chief stew on Below Deck Sailing Yacht agreed that the room reassignments seemed bizarre. “In my 8 years of yachting, typically for cabin arrangements no one makes demands, you need to be easy going but also, couples don’t take priority if it means making others uncomfortable,” she commented on the thread.
“Omg I couldn’t imagine making everyone move so that @BerryPaget and I can share a cabin just because we’re a couple,” Duggan agreed. “ESPECIALLY if we didn’t join the boat together! We’ve done plenty of stints not sharing a cabin even on Parsifal. It’s just not a big deal.”
MacGillivray shared her own experience when she worked on a yacht with a boyfriend for three years. She never expected to share a cabin with her boyfriend and the crew should be in full agreement about the rooming situation.
