Below Deck Sailing Yacht's Boat Crash Was More Intense Than We Could've Imagined

On May 10's episode of Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Bravo viewers watched as Parsifal III made contact with a docking wall...twice.

By Alyssa Ray May 11, 2021 2:00 AMTags
Watch: What We've Learned About Yachting From "Below Deck"

Dock drama.

On tonight, May 10's episode of Below Deck Sailing Yacht, the drama that's been teased all season finally occurred. We're, of course, talking about the moment mega-yacht Parsifal III made contact with a docking wall. Yet, the new episode revealed that there were two mishaps involving docking.

The initial accident, which occurred towards the latter half of the episode, certainly came out of nowhere. In the moments leading up to the problem, Captain Glenn Shephard noted to first mate Gary King that the wind was blowing 25 knots and advised his deckhand team to ease out one of the lines and place more fenders on the dock.

Although some fenders were already in place, deckhand Sydney Zaruba began to panic when she noticed the ship heading "really far to starboard." As Sydney called out to Gary, fellow deckhand Jean-Luc Cerza Lanaux scrambled to grab more fenders.

"We might need to startup, Glenn," Gary radioed to the captain.

Despite Glenn racing to start up the ship, Parsifal III found itself making contact with the dock.

"We're rubbing on the dock, Glenn," the first mate told the captain. "We're rubbing on the dock."

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The situation was certainly a dire one as Sydney was heard saying "f--king hell" while trying to place fenders. To make matters worse, the port anchor was dragging during all of this.

Captain Glenn then ordered his crew to disconnect the ship from the shore power and tried to kick ahead. "We need to get a generator online," the captain informed Gary. "I don't have any thrusters."

He then ordered everyone aboard to get as far away from the dock as possible. Not only was Sydney seen jumping onto the ship, but the crew also faced lines snapping off as they pulled away.

They weren't out of the woods just yet as they needed a generator turned on and chief engineer Colin Macrae was missing in action. Thankfully, Gary was able to turn on one of the generators.

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Colin, who raced back to the ship in a tender, noted in a confessional, "If Gary didn't know how to start that generator, we wouldn't have been able to pick up the anchor, Glenn would have no steering and it would've been a totally different situation. I think Gary saved our ass."

After inspecting the stern, Glenn declared it "was a lot better than I was imagining." To the camera, Glenn noted there could've been "a lot more serious damage, like, a season ending kind of damage."

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only collision of the episode as, at a different dock, the ship faced a malfunction and full on collided with the wall. Yep, you read that correctly. "I'm f--king going ahead, but I've lost it," Captain Glenn said to himself as his crew shouted at him to slow down. "F--k me. God damn it. F--k."

The captain addressed the incident with E! News back in February, calling the situation "very serious."

"It's just something you want to avoid," he said at the time. "I've avoided it all my career and, of course, now with the cameras rolling it happens."

Below Deck Sailing Yacht airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on Bravo.

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