Gabriela Reveals ‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’ Drama with Ashley Had Nothing to Do with Rank [Exclusive]

Stews Gabriela Barragan and Ashley Marti seemed to fight exhaustively about their rank on Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 3.

But Barragan recently revealed that rank wasn’t really the crux of their issue. In fact, the initial issue had almost nothing to do with rank but instead, everything to do with who would hook up with first mate Gary King.

“Episode one, it wasn’t about our experience,” Barragan dished with Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “But one of the first things she said to me when we were in our cabin unpacking maybe 10 minutes after we met. She goes, ‘Gary’s really hot.’ And I was like, he’s cute. But I was like, OK … because I only had only met Gary for a couple of minutes.”

Ashley made it clear she was interested in Gary on ‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’

Barragan ended up hooking up with King during the season – but who didn’t? However, she wasn’t interested in him initially. “I was like, oh Colin [MacRae]. Are you single this season?” she recalled. “Oh my God, I had the biggest crush on Colin, too. So [chef] Marcus [Spaziani] and Colin were my favorites at first sight.”

But Marti made it perfectly clear that Barragan should back off from even having any romantic feelings about King. “So one of the first things she said to me, she goes, ‘I hope we don’t end up fighting over the same guy.’ I was like, I remember … Roll back the footage!” Barragan exclaimed. “Cause I was like, I don’t fight over men.”

“And I remember that rubbed me the wrong way because I was like, do women still fight over men? Like, is that still a thing? And then I was like, OK, she’s young. Like, who says that? But I also thought it was weird that she thought that. Like, why would she say that to me? To stake her claim or to threaten me or to put it out there that she was interested? So that was like strike one for me already.”

They didn’t have the same amount of experience

Rank and position on the boat did come into play, but Barragan recalled how Marti thought they arrived with the same amount of job experience. “And then when we start to flip the boat. This is still like the first day. And we were talking about our experience and I told her about my craft cocktail experience, bartending. I’ve been a judge at bartending competitions,” Barragan explained. “I was really immersed in the cocktail world for the last seven years before yachting. So I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I was a bartender. I’ve done nightlife, I’ve done fine dining, I’ve done craft cocktails.'”

“She’s like, ‘Oh, I was a bartender, too.’ And I was like, ‘Really, where?’ She’s like, ‘At my neighborhood bar when I was in college.’ So it was like pouring draft beers and shots of Jameson. That’s not bartending, right?”

How did Ashley get back at Gabriela for becoming 2nd stew on ‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’?

Fighting about their skill level wasn’t on Barragan’s radar at first. But the Gabriela and Ashley Below Deck drama escalated when Barragan realized that Marti slacked on the job purposefully to make her look bad – and annoyed.

“So she didn’t have any foundational skills like things that I learned when I was day working,” Barragan said. “When I first got into the industry where I worked on really good boats, where they taught me basic things like put your cleaning tools and your materials away when you’re done with them and put them back neatly and leave everything better than you found it.”

“She would throw s*** in the cabinets and I would take my time to reorganize it, put it back neatly. And when I would come back and it would be disheveled again. That s*** pissed me off,” Barragan recalled.

“I almost think she was doing it on purpose to irritate me,” she said. Marti would often complain that Barragan was being too stern with her. “Like she was already proving to me, and because I was the one managing her, not [chief stew] Daisy [Kelliher], I was seeing all of this. I was seeing that she was sloppy. She doesn’t have a foundation. She only performs in front of Daisy. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s a performance. To make Daisy think she’s good at her job.”

Unfortunately, the drama got the best of Barragan and she quit before the end of the season.

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