How Engine Problems Nearly Sunk an Entire Season of Bravo’s ‘Below Deck: Sailing Yacht’

“We thought the season was over. It was obviously just catastrophic,” recalls chief engineer Colin Macrae

BELOW DECK SAILING YACHT — Pictured: Captain Glenn Shephard — (Photo by: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)

Reality television crews are prepared for the unexpected: two cast members may spontaneously begin fighting each other, a contestant may become injured, etc. But when the Parsifal III, the ship that serves as the setting for Bravo’s popular “Below Deck: Sailing Yacht,” suffered engine failure 24 hours before the season’s first charter, the cast and crew had to scramble to find a solution.

The drama played out in the first three episodes of Season 4, which are now streaming on Peacock. But there wouldn’t have been a season at all if it weren’t for the quick thinking and expertise of chief engineer Colin Macrae.

TheWrap recently caught up with Macrae, Captain Glenn Shephard and executive producer Courtland Cox to discuss the near-disaster.

Walk us through the timeline of what happened. The issue was only discovered less than 24 hours before the first charter?

Macrae: We don’t get a lot of time to prepare the yacht for charter, we kind of come in, do our thing and then head off on our merry way. The initial issue that I thought we were dealing with was a starter motor issue, so I thought it was electrical. It’s all sort of revealed in the episodes but it was something much more serious. The engine itself was basically locked up. There was no way to run that engine.

Shephard: The boat had just crossed the Atlantic and had a lot of work done on the engine. Turns out one of the things that was done to the engine turned out to be the cause of the problem. When they cleaned that part that leaked water into the engine — we call it the aftercooler — they were using seawater. They inadvertently, possibly opened up a pinhole that had been protected or kept closed by some dirt.

The Parsifal III was unable to leave dock for the first charter (Photo by: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)

The seawater locked up the engine?

Shephard: It was a mechanical blockage, which is due to what we call a water lock, or hydro lock. There’s water in the cylinders, and in the pistons just can’t go up and down.

Once we figure that out and we understand the problem with the assistance of the local mechanics, we’re like, “OK, what can we do? How can we fix it in a normal situation like this?” And you see it in Episode 1. Even if all the parts are available, you’re talking a minimum of two weeks to rebuild it. And that’s an absolute minimum, that’s what these guys are quoting. So yeah, it’s pretty dire. It’s not a fun conversation.

So you’re not only looking at losing the first charter, but possibly the entire season of the show?

Macrae: It was absolutely devastating. And the nature of the disaster was that we thought that the season was over. It was obviously just catastrophic. And I had to put 15-16 years of experience as an engineer to use, to try and get us out of that, or the season was literally over.

When did production realize something was really wrong?

Cox: We had a camera following Colin and Glenn in the engine room, but it’s very loud in there so it’s hard to hear actually what’s happening. After they come out and have a conversation in the wheelhouse where Colin lays it out to Glenn, that’s when I think, “Oh God, I gotta go talk to Glenn and find out what’s really happening here.”

And so, it’s within 15 minutes that I worriedly run up and I’m saying, “Is it a starter issue? It’s not a starter issue. What are the other problems that we’re facing and how is this gonna affect us?” Glenn is so Canadian; he’s such an optimist and I trust Glenn. And Colin is an amazing engineer.

So Glenn’s calmly like, “I think we’ll be able to figure it out. Colin is on it.” And so I’m thinking, “Okay great. In the back of my head and my producer brain, I’m thinking that’s all well and good. But if not, then what happens? I’m confident, as Glenn is on that first night, that something can be fixed and then as it goes later and later and later into the night. And we’re not seeing that, that all of the initial things that Colin thought it was are actually coming to fruition. That’s when I start to get a little panicked. And, you know, I start running through all of the bad scenarios in my brain.

So the bad scenario did happen and the ship wasn’t able to leave dock after the charter guests arrived. How was having that conversation?

Shephard: It’s a lot of dread. We’re so used to having guests come on and going out having a great holiday, we know how much they expect that. And a big part of that holiday, especially on a sailing super yacht is to get off the dock and go sailing. And so it was not fun at all to have to deliver that news. Obviously, as the captain — and this goes for any one of the crew — we feel responsible because that’s our whole point to be there is to make sure guests come on board and have a great holiday. And if we don’t have the tools, or something goes wrong with the tools to be able to let allow us to do that, we all feel bad.

I especially feel bad because the buck stops with me. And I’m the one who has to give them the bad news and try to give it to them in the nicest way possible.

Being stuck at the dock must complicate production, too.

Cox: It’s interesting for me as a producer to say, “All right, well, we’re not going to leave the dock likely tomorrow.” How is Glenn going to present that to the guests? And how are the guests going to react? And what is that going to mean as a domino effect for the yacht crew? And in my experience — I’ve done every season of the show since day one — when the boat is stuck at the dock for weather or whatever, it is a nightmare for the yacht crew. Because all of a sudden, the guests aren’t distracted by water toys and beautiful backdrops. They want service 24/7. There’s gonna be a ripple effect and the crew are gonna hate it, the chef’s gonna hate it, and [chief stewardess] Daisy is gonna hate it. The deck crew love it because the deck crew have less to do.

So you planned a beach day off the yacht for the guests, another complication. But you still need to follow what’s happening with the engine and everything else on the boat.

Cox: I have at max three camera crews on the boat, usually two, sometimes three. And sometimes there are four or five places that need to be covered as important story. And it’s just sort of figuring that out and allocating that. And so you know, every problem that the boat faces becomes a problem for us as well. And I joke always, when it’s conflict when it’s complicated for us as producers, it’s good television. Yeah. If it’s easy for us, then it’s boring.

Chief engineer Colin Macrae came up with solutions to keep the boat running (Photo by: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)

Fortunately, Colin was able to come up with an ingenious solution but sadly, that whole first charter was lost.

Shephard: We basically took that part off and we didn’t have any aftercooling. That impacted the running temperature of the engine, so we had to run a little bit slower than we normally would maybe — maybe 15%. So we’re still able to go out and do everything, but we still have to be very careful in doing it that way because we were at 85% capacity. It was pretty creative and clever to come up with that solution because a lot of people would say you’ve got to rebuild. And that’s gonna take you a month or two, and there’s your season gone. So I’m really happy that Colin had that idea. And I’m glad that it was something that we could implement, and that it worked out as well as it did.

Now that you’ve survived this near-disaster, how does it affect your approach for future seasons of “Below Deck: Sailing Yacht”?

Shephard: I just got off Parsifal about three weeks ago in Spain. And we’ve just done a complete major rebuild of that engine. Every part that could come off that engine was taken off, and a new part was replaced. So it’s basically a new engine. We’re doing the same thing on our generators, we’re upgrading a lot of systems. And you always do that. But you know, if you talk to any super yacht owner, you’ll find out that a brand new boat, especially because a lot of these are semi-custom, but a brand new boat can have problems. So it’s not just it’s not like it was due to neglect or anything like that.

Cox: It’s very important to us that we have a dialogue with the owner of the yacht; Glenn works for that owner. So he’s kind of our conduit. I literally said to Glenn, “Before this [next] season, I want to see a video of that engine rebuild happening in Denia, Spain, where it was happening. I want to see it with my own eyes.”

And he laughed, and he said, “I get it.” And so that’s new. Before, you sort of trust when you charter a yacht, you’re just sort of running on faith that it’s going to work. And so that has changed. But listen, there are so many things that can go wrong on a yacht. This show is always like, just on a precipice of disaster. And it’s part of why it makes it great because the stakes are so real all the time.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

“Below Deck: Sailing Yacht” airs Mondays on Bravo.

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