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Captain Kerry Titheradge joined the original “Below Deck” franchise when season 11 debuted on Bravo, but he said he had a lot of support from the other captains when he made the leap from “Below Deck Adventure.”
“Everybody [reached out],” he told Us Weekly after the show’s season premiere. “On the way down to Grenada, I was chatting with [Captain] Lee [Rosbach] in the car,” he said. Rosbach was the original “Below Deck” captain before exiting the show after season 10. “He was talking about the boat. He talked about Fraser [Olender] and Ben [Willoughby],” Titheradge added.
Willoughby and Olender were both with Rosbach in season 10 and the crew was on motor yacht St. David, the same yacht used in season 11. “[Captain] Jason [Chambers] reached out,” Titheradge added of his “Below Deck Down Under” counterpart. “[Captain] Glenn [Shephard] reached out,” he added about the “Below Deck Sailing Yacht” captain. “We pick on each other a lot, so he calls me his stunt double. It’s a big family. We genuinely are. It’s great.”
Titheradge previously admitted that joining the franchise was a “massive” step after Rosbach’s departure. “Lee has been the backbone of Below Deck for 10 years,” the Australian captain told ET. “I’ve known Lee since before Below Deck, we used to play golf together, and before I took on Adventure, I called Lee up and I asked him, I said, ‘Mate, would you do this again if you could redo this?’ He said, ‘Absolutely, mate…’ and his best piece of advice is just, be yourself and that is what I did.”
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Captain Kerry Titheradge Said He Wanted to Come to His Own Conclusions About His Crew Members
Although Olender and Willoughby appeared in “Below Deck” prior to the 11th season, Captain Kerry told Us Weekly that he didn’t want to “make judgments” about anyone before he got to know them himself. “I try not to make judgements when they turn up. It’s important to look at their CVs,” he explained. “This year I made a decision that I wasn’t going to give stripes out. I wasn’t going to allocate anyone full-time on something before knowing how they work, who they are and what attitude they bring to the team.”
He said he believed it was a good decision and that it worked really well for him this season. However, Titheradge acknowledged that when he watched the start of the show, he was surprised to see the extent of the “power struggle” between Willoughby and bosun Jared Woodin. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until that first episode,” he added.
‘Below Deck’ Season 11 Saw Both the Interior & Exterior Crews Struggle With the Start of the Charter Season
The premiere of “Below Deck” season 11 introduced viewers to a slew of new faces as it also hinted at drama to come. In the deck team, Willoughby questioned Woodin’s experience as a bosun and pointed out that he hadn’t worked on a large yacht in many years.
In the interior, Olender found one of his stews, Cat Baugh, crying in the crew mess during her break. She admitted that she felt she couldn’t show her true potential in the role she’d been given. After Olender comforted her, he mumbled under his breath on his way out that he didn’t think she’d last.
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