Captain Lee Clarifies He ‘Did Not Slam’ Captain Sandy After Weighing In on Her ‘Below Deck Med’ Rules
Below Deck's Captain Lee Rosbach wants to make it clear he wasn't throwing shade at Captain Sandy Yawn.
During the Wednesday, June 12, episode of his "Salty With Captain Lee" podcast, Lee, 74, addressed a headline he read that claimed he slammed the rules Sandy, 59, introduced on Below Deck Mediterranean.
"What actually happened was I got an inquiry from someone on Instagram who asked me if it was a rule to never wake the chef up. End of inquiry. They didn't tell me why they were asking the question and I didn't know and didn't care," Lee recalled about the social media interaction. "I told them that no it isn't."
Lee was asked the question after it was originally brought up on season 9 of Below Deck Mediterranean. Captain Sandy sided with Chef Johnathan Shillingford when he refused to wake up late at night to help with snacks for the guests. Viewers subsequently took to social media to see where Lee landed on the topic.
"At least not on my boat it isn't a rule that you never wake the chef. If it is something the stew or the chief stew could handle on their own then let the chef sleep," Lee continued on Wednesday. "If it is throwing in a frozen pizza or making a ham and cheese. If it is something simple then you should be able to handle that for a late night snack thing."
According to Lee, regulations about the chef cooking after hours differ boat to boat.
"But if it is a little more intricate than that and takes more than a stew then you wake the chef up because it is what he is getting paid for. I know all about the rules where they are required to get a [specific] amount of sleep in a 24-hour period," he added. "I am aware of all that but in this particular instance it wouldn't have taken the chef — with someone helping him — more than 45 minutes to knock that out."
Lee wanted to clarify though that none of his comments were a dig at Sandy. He pointed out that he didn't even know the question was related to his fellow captain until he saw recent headlines.
"Sandy's name was never mentioned, and I never mentioned Sandy's name. It is Sandy's boat, she is the captain, [so] it is her rules. If she doesn't want her chef woken up, then you don't wake him up. It is that simple," he fired back on Wednesday. "There is no discussion about this. I am just saying that on my boat I would have woken the chef up."
Lee wasn't thrilled by the narrative that he was shading Sandy, adding, "I did not slam Sandy, she can run her boat any way she likes. I was just answering a question posed to me by a fan. Sandy wasn't even involved in the conversation, and I am sure she knew nothing about this either. It just really pissed me off."
As for Sandy, she recently defended her stance after she was asked why she didn't think Johnathan should have helped when she asked Chef Tom Checketts to cut cucumbers for guests on a past season of the hit Bravo series.
"It was during the day. It wasn't at night," Sandy said on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Monday, June 10, about her reasoning for waking Tom. "It wasn't at the end of dinner service. It was the after-breakfast service."
This week's episode of Below Deck Med picked up after the rest of the crew learned about Johnathan's refusal to get up. Chief stew Aesha Scott — and Sandy — pointed out that the guests did request snacks after hours so he should have prepared something ahead of time.
Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
