It looks like the Below Deck Down Under crew is sailing into some troubled waters — and it could cost someone their job.
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One crew member could have a much shorter charter season than expected if Chief Stew Lara Rigby and Bosun Wihan Du Toit can’t work out their differences.
The department heads spent nearly all of Season 3, Episode 9 at odds with one another, clashing over everything from what Lara saw as the deck crew’s frequent breaks to a messy foam-filled deck. By the episode’s end, the near-constant bickering had Captain Jason Chambers at the end of his rope.
“I’m so over this drama with Lara and Wihan,” Jason said in his confessional. “If they can’t figure this out and find a way to work together, someone’s going home.”
To find out what led up to the ominous warning and the drama expected ahead on the Katina, read on below:
Why are Lara and Wihan fighting on Below Deck Down Under?
It’s no secret that Lara likes to run a tight ship. But her super-efficient management style is directly at odds with Wihan’s more laissez-faire approach to running a team, something they tried to hash out at a meeting between all the department heads at the start of the episode.
“I just feel sometimes the deck team are kind of like having this fun time and it’s like I need that support from you to be like, ‘Listen to what we’re doing,’” Lara told him.
“I cannot be everywhere,” Wihan dismissively replied.
But she wasn’t the only one feeling the frustration. Head chef Tzarina Mace-Ralph also had a few choice words for Wihan after his coordination of a guest excursion picnic had disastrous results.
“You have an explanation for everything,” an angry Tzarina told him. “You’ve not once gone, ‘Yeah, I f--ked up.’ Not once. She just asked for you something, you come straight back in with an excuse.”
As Wihan saw it, he needed to put the needs of his own team first before accommodating the other departments.
“I’m very sorry, but I need to prioritize whatever I need to do on deck too,” he said.
He then put the blame on the extreme heat.
“It is so hot outside, I can barely breathe. I’m exhausted, my head is pounding,” he told them of the tropical climate. “I do need to send my deck crew down in between us to go fill up our water bottles because we are drinking so much water.”
But, according to Lara, water had “never been a problem.” She took issue with the deck crew’s regular coffee breaks and galley chats.
“All honesty, I just feel like the deck team are doing what they want to do,” she continued. “If I think back to my team on my boat, the deck are friends with the bosun, first officer, but they 100 percent would not be standing there with a coffee. They’d be in so much trouble.”
Wihan had his own perspective on the issue.
“That’s not the way I manage,” he said of his more laid-back style. “I don’t want it to be like walking into a room like, ‘oh my god, here he comes’ and be the, like, [expletive]. It’s just not how I want to manage.”
The trio agreed to have a brief department head meeting after going over the guest preference sheets with Jason, but no one seemed very satisfied by the arrangement.
“At this point, I’m pissed,” Lara told producers in her confessional. “I don’t think Wihan has a managerial style. I don’t think he even knows how to do it. He just wings it every single day.”
Meanwhile, Wihan voiced his own criticisms of Lara’s approach.
“I manage my team in a certain way and we can have fun and they can not have that,” he said in his own confessional. “Is that my f--king problem? No.”
When the department heads met again for a preference sheet meeting with Jason, the tension was still palpable.
“You guys had a talk yesterday. How’re you feeling?” Jason asked.
“Pretty good,” Wihan said as a forlorn-looking Lara just looked on.
“I want you all to run the boat, OK?” Jason told them. “I’ll drive it.”
A foam party on Below Deck Down Under causes issues
But the real drama went down after an over-the-top foam party had the boat’s adrenaline-fueled charter guests swimming in chest-high foam on the deck.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” one of the guests shouted. “Is this real life?”
The party may have been epic, but it also left an epic mess. Deckhand Johnny Arvanitis was left to clean up the massive amount of foam on his own into the wee hours of the night after Wihan grabbed himself a snack and then went to bed.
“Where is Wihan?” Johnny asked as he hosed off the mess.
Exhausted, Johnny finally headed to bed just after 1:30 a.m., hoping that Harry Van Vilet would finish up the cleaning duties when his shift started at 6 a.m.
“Of course I'm upset,” Johnny later told producers of being left on his own. “I only had three hours to clean this foam but orders are orders. I did the best I possibly could. If I was a f--king octopus I could clean it better, but I only have two hands.”
Harry seemed equally overwhelmed when he woke up and discovered the boat was “filthy.” The team was still working to get the cleaning under control hours later as the guests were getting ready to sit down for breakfast around 9 a.m..
As Wihan ordered Harry to wipe off the deck by the dining table, Lara walked by and wasn’t happy about what she found.
“Wihan, I feel like this needs to be done, like, way, way ahead of time, than when the guests are here,” she said.
Wihan put the blame on Johnny, saying “I don’t know what happened,” before shifting the blame to Harry.
Lara held her ground that 9 a.m. was “not really like a time to do cleaning” especially since the guests were ready to sit down.
A frustrated Wihan then marched off to talk to Jason, leaving Harry on his own.
Up on the captain’s deck, Wihan sought solace in Jason, telling him that the foam party had left a “big mess.”
“When I got on board this morning, there’s obviously a lot of spots and cake that’s been messed and whatever, so Harry should have done that,” he told him. “But then, Lara, she just looks at me and says, ‘Hey, you just always have an answer for everything, this should have been done a long time ago.”
“I cannot have someone commenting stuff like that,” he continued. “She has no idea what’s going on on the outside.”
But the visibly frustrated Jason may not have been the sympathetic ear that Wihan was hoping for.
“We’re five charters in, you know the job,” he told him. “Don’t throw anyone under the bus. Let’s get it perfect.”
Meanwhile, Lara was airing out her own grievances to Tzarina in the kitchen, calling the “unprofessional” Wihan someone she “can’t work with.”
“He doesn’t take any accountability, he doesn’t take any responsibility. He blames everyone else,” she said. “I just — I don’t know what to do.”
As the episode wrapped, Jason offered up the warning that one of them could be sent home — but viewers will have to keep tuning in to see what will happen.
In the meantime, learn what Adair Werley thinks of Harry's boatmance with Brianna "Bri" Duffield.
