Sandy Yawn’s day on charter blends discipline and sobriety

Sandy Yawn’s – Captain Sandy Yawn, who leads yacht crews on Bravo’s “Below Deck Mediterranean,” walks through a typical day at sea ahead of the premiere of season 11—starting at 7 a.m. with workouts, leaning on maritime-law rest rules, and treating communication, accountabil

Captain Sandy Yawn starts her day at 7 a.m., already on deck, already working—until the last person goes to bed. It’s a routine built for consistency, and in her world that consistency isn’t just a leadership style. It’s what keeps repeat charters from turning into a revolving door.

When Yawn remembers how she learned to manage owners, she goes back to one moment on the phone in an office—an owner telling her, “I don’t know, take 15 minutes and educate me.” The lesson stuck. “I thought, ‘He doesn’t know!’ Wow,” she said. “I don’t have to know everything.”

That idea—calm competence instead of panic—shows up in how she describes her biggest challenge aboard: keeping the crew consistent. “No owner or client wants to go through different crew for repeat charters. ” she said. comparing it to “Cheers. ” where you “always go back to where people know who you are.” She says repeat clients’ preferences are tracked in logs. including the details as small as how they like their tea or coffee.

Her “superpower,” she adds, is getting the crew to come back—without leading through fear. “I don’t lead with fear and I don’t lead with intimidation,” Yawn said. “I lead like a puppy.” In her description. teaching comes through action and example: the “puppy” watches from the steps. then crawls into the water and starts swimming with her.

A typical day at sea runs on tight maritime rules, even when the workload is intense. Yawn says she tries to take a rest period in the middle of the day. noting that crew members are required to have eight hours of rest in a 24-hour period—“that’s maritime law”—while the way they use that time is up to them. She describes herself as a creature of habit, including coffee every morning.

She doesn’t eat first thing and usually waits until about 10 or 11 a.m. then keeps breakfast simple with fresh orange juice. She even squeezes fresh orange juice daily when she’s home in Florida. During filming for the season. though. the routine gets pressured by the demands of production—she says she ate “a lot of croissants. ” gaining weight after being on site a week before filming started. The saving grace was access to a gym.

Yawn is explicit about why fitness matters to her: “I’m a gym person,” she said, and staying fit gets harder as she gets older. At home, she has “two SoulCycle bikes and a gym,” and she says she’s been working out every day for this season.

Her leadership style, she also says, is shaped by her sobriety. She says she’s “sober,” and that she has “the magic of the 12 steps,” which she calls life-changing. In the morning. she reads meditation and then “hits my knees” to ask for help for the day—to be a good human being and not selfish. At the end of her day, she reviews it in the spirit of recovery: “Have I hurt anyone?. Do I owe an amends?. It’s the maintenance part of recovery.”.

That accountability isn’t theoretical aboard a yacht. She recounts a call with a boat’s owner about money and a budget she says had gone over. After the call. she remembers her first officer asking her something. and she “bit his head off.” The moment that followed mattered to her. She watched the shift on his face—“from happy to sad”—and she realized she didn’t want that. She apologized immediately, telling him, “Rob, you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”.

Promptly admitting a mistake and saying “you’re sorry” is, she said, “the 10th step.” Even on “Below Deck,” even with the crew, her rule is straightforward: if she says something that hurts someone’s feelings or isn’t thinking, she will apologize.

Yawn’s perspective on work also comes from how her industry has changed—and how time away from home used to be harsher. She says that in the maritime world “before,” people didn’t see her for long stretches. She wasn’t present when her mom died. and she says she wasn’t in her mother’s life for two years. “That was terrible,” Yawn said, adding that she realized “something has to change.”.

Now, she says, the industry has shifted. On bigger boats. there are rotations: some crew may work “four months or five months on” and then take “five months off.” For her. between “Below Deck. ” she says she runs a few boats. She distinguishes it from charters by saying that for a charter. “the owner wants to hire you. ” and that she’s often not available because she has to do the TV show.

Filming “Below Deck” is intense in a way a typical yacht season isn’t. Yawn says she arrives early to adjust. and that filming is “six weeks. ” but she’s gone for “eight weeks.” She also says she needs “at least four days to prepare” because she’s taking on a boat for the first time with a whole new crew. While she describes typical charter life as giving more time between charters—and longer breaks to recharge—she says filming means she’s “back-to-back.” She adds that she has experienced “back-to-back charters and 24-hour turnarounds” earlier in her career. too.

When it comes to communicating on deck, she treats clarity as both a skill and a responsibility. “Being on deck is about speaking clearly,” Yawn said. She says maritime school trains crew to project their voices. and that communication has to be “crisp.” She explains that enunciation and pronunciation have to be “spot-on. ” and that crews practice how to talk on a radio and ask for help in a classroom.

If the voice is too soft, she says, people won’t listen; if it’s too harsh, they also won’t. The sweet spot is inviting and direct, and she frames it as respect—“because it’s almost like a respect of that.” “Your voice is everything,” Yawn said. “Your voice is your power.”

That communication philosophy extends beyond the deck. She tells a friend who runs a charity and works a lot by email. “Pick the phone up.” If texts start stacking up—more than “two. three. or four”—she says she picks up the phone because it can otherwise escalate in your mind. including how someone else might interpret tone.

Off-charter, she tries to make room for life with her wife, Leah. She says she recently told Leah, “We’re not having fun. We work too much. We’re working all the time.” Her answer was to find live music. take dance lessons together. and actually go do things. She grew up with Southern rock and roll but listens to pop music too, and her playlist is “very mixed.”.

They travel in the way Yawn wants—spending more on experiences than on things. She mentions going to the Monaco Boat Show. then going to the Hamptons for a week. then Newport. finishing in Boston. She describes their day-to-day at home as collaborative: their desks face each other in their office. they collaborate and talk. and there’s a whiteboard with everything she has to do. In their partnership. she says she’s the organized one because she works on a boat—“You have to know which manual to grab when you’re in trouble.”.

“Below Deck Mediterranean” season 11 premieres at 8 p.m. EST on Bravo.

Sandy Yawn Below Deck Mediterranean season 11 superyacht captain yacht crew leadership sobriety 12 steps maritime law rest hours Bravo