Below Deck Cast — Where Are They All Now? (2026)

Why Below Deck Cast Fans Never Stop Searching

Below Deck has gotten complicated with all the cast speculation and “where are they now” noise flying around. If you’ve typed that exact phrase into Google at 11pm on a Tuesday while rewatching a Season 3 episode — honestly, you’re in good company. As someone who’s covered the yacht industry professionally for years, I learned everything there is to know about what this franchise does to people’s careers, their reputations, and sometimes their sense of self. The cast questions don’t slow down. Twelve seasons in, they’ve actually gotten louder.

Below Deck premiered on Bravo in July 2013. Simple premise — follow a luxury charter yacht crew through a season. What nobody predicted was a franchise with six spinoffs, international editions, and a fanbase that tracks former crew members like they’re monitoring AIS vessel data. The original show, the Mediterranean edition, the Sailing Yacht spinoff, Down Under, Adventure — we’re talking hundreds of crew members who passed through those cabins and stairwells. Hundreds of lives the cameras touched and then left.

This article is the hub. Where did the major cast members land? What are they doing in 2026? And — because we cover yachting as an industry, not just as entertainment — what happened to the actual boats? That maritime angle is something entertainment sites consistently miss. People.com will tell you Kate Chastain appeared on a podcast. We’ll tell you the full picture.

Captain Lee Rosbach — Where Is He Now

Captain Lee Rosbach called himself “the Stud of the Sea” without a trace of irony. Somehow it worked. That’s what makes Lee endearing to us franchise lifers — the self-awareness buried under the bravado. His departure from Season 10 mid-charter, due to serious foot complications requiring surgery, hit differently than any other cast exit the show has produced. Raw doesn’t cover it. He returned briefly, then stepped away from active filming — and the question of his current status gets searched thousands of times every month.

We have a full dedicated article covering Captain Lee’s trajectory — his health updates, his memoir Running Against the Tide, his relationship with the franchise post-departure, and whether he’s still working in yachting. Read our complete Captain Lee — Where Is He Now feature here. Short version: he stays publicly engaged with fans, does speaking appearances, and has been transparent about prioritizing his health over returning to active captaining. Whether his body eventually allows a wheelhouse return is something we dig into over there.

What I’ll add here — and entertainment coverage almost never bothers — is that Captain Lee came up through legitimate yachting long before cameras existed. He held a USCG 100-ton Master license and worked charters in Florida before Bravo knew what a superyacht was. That background is why actual maritime professionals respected him, not just Bravo viewers. His story after Below Deck is inseparable from that history.

Captain Sandy Yawn — The Franchise’s Other Pillar

Probably should have opened with this section, honestly. Captain Sandy Yawn’s current activity level makes Captain Lee’s look quiet by comparison. She joined Below Deck Mediterranean in Season 2 back in 2017 and became one of the most polarizing — and durable — figures the entire franchise produced. People either find her management style inspiring or infuriating. Rarely anything in between.

But what is Sandy’s 3,000-ton Master Mariner license, really? In essence, it’s one of the highest levels of civilian maritime certification available. But it’s much more than that — it’s the thing that separates her from cast members who played authority figures on television versus someone who actually earned the right to command a commercial vessel. Entertainment sites don’t bother with that distinction. In the maritime world, it matters enormously.

In 2026, Sandy is still one of the most professionally active alumni the franchise has produced. She launched her own leadership and motivational speaking platform after her highest-profile Mediterranean seasons — keynote addresses at maritime industry conferences specifically targeting women in professional maritime roles, not just generic business events. She co-authored leadership content, has been vocal about addiction recovery and sobriety advocacy — subjects she discussed openly on-screen — and appeared at women-in-yachting panels in Antibes and Fort Lauderdale throughout 2024 and into 2025. The yachting trade press covered those. Entertainment press didn’t. She’s also been linked to a Below Deck production return in a consulting capacity, though her on-screen role has evolved significantly from the hands-on captain she was in early Mediterranean seasons.

Kate Chastain — From Chief Stew to Media Personality

Kate Chastain was the chief stew who made table napkin folding feel like performance art and eye-rolling feel like an Olympic sport. She left Below Deck after Season 7 in 2020 — and the transition she pulled off afterward was genuinely one of the more interesting career pivots any Below Deck alumnus has managed. Don’t make my mistake of underestimating how deliberately she built what came next.

Trained by years of managing interior crews on yachts valued north of $20 million, Kate moved firmly into media. She joined Bravo’s Chat Chat as a co-host, became a regular on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, and established herself as the go-to talking head for Below Deck commentary whenever Bravo needed someone who actually understood what they were watching. Her memoir — Lucky: How I Survived Stalkers, Weird Jobs, Awful Dates, and Other Disasters, published in 2020 — charted her life before and through her yachting career.

In 2026, Kate operates primarily as a media personality and content creator. Podcast presence, social following in the hundreds of thousands, brand partnerships skewing toward travel and lifestyle — natural extensions of a career spent on luxury vessels in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. What she hasn’t done is return to working yachts professionally. In interviews, she’s been candid: the chief stew lifestyle is brutal in ways cameras only partially capture. Fourteen-hour days, no personal space, guests who think $200,000 for a week’s charter means they can demand anything at any hour. She’s not going back. And honestly? Good for her.

Hannah Ferrier — Below Deck Med After the Show

Hannah Ferrier’s exit from Below Deck Mediterranean Season 5 remains one of the most discussed departures in franchise history. She was let go mid-season after Captain Sandy reported to the boat’s captain agent that Hannah possessed an undeclared Valium prescription and a CBD pen — a serious protocol issue on a commercially certified vessel. The yacht industry has strict rules about undeclared medications. Those rules exist for real maritime safety reasons. That context got buried in entertainment coverage, which framed the whole thing as interpersonal conflict. It wasn’t only that.

Frustrated by how the situation played out and apparently done with the yachting world entirely, Hannah redirected her energy into something most people didn’t predict: she became a genuinely successful entrepreneur and content creator focused on motherhood and lifestyle — nothing yacht-related whatsoever. She married Josh Roberts in 2021, has two children, and is based in Sydney. Her social media presence shifted almost entirely toward family life, parenting content, and Australian lifestyle content.

She launched an online platform and digital content business, runs a podcast called Dear Diary, You’re Kidding focused on motherhood and personal stories, and has done brand partnerships in the parenting and wellness space. She’s notably absent from the yachting industry conversation — which, given how she left, probably isn’t surprising to anyone. In interviews, she’s measured but honest: proud of the work, complicated feelings about the ending, clearly moved on. She did briefly appear on Below Deck Down Under in a guest capacity, which suggested the door wasn’t entirely closed. But she hasn’t returned to any ongoing franchise role.

Chef Ben Robinson — The Galley Legend’s Current Projects

Ben Robinson was the chef who made you want to eat everything he described even through a television screen — charisma that made food content feel inevitable for him post-show. He appeared across multiple Below Deck seasons, both the original and Mediterranean, and was consistently one of the most competent, entertaining crew members the franchise produced. That’s a combination that doesn’t show up often.

Post-Below Deck, Ben leaned hard into the culinary content space. He launched his own food and travel platform, does private chef work for high-net-worth clients — the kind that doesn’t show up on Instagram because the clients pay specifically to avoid that — and has worked on cookbook development. He participates in charity culinary events, has appeared on cooking-adjacent television programming, and maintains a presence in the actual yacht industry through private charter chef engagements. High season in the South of France and Caribbean. That work pays extraordinarily well if you have the reputation to command it. He does.

He also launched a line of culinary products and has done collaboration work in the food and beverage space. What’s interesting from a maritime angle: Ben represents a career path that more professional yacht chefs are now actively trying to replicate. Use the television exposure to build a personal brand that doesn’t require you to spend nine months a year in a galley the size of a large closet. A superyacht galley on a 150-foot vessel might measure 180 square feet on a good day — Ben cooked extraordinary food in conditions that professional shoreside chefs would refuse on principle. Building a platform on that credibility makes complete sense.

Other Fan-Favorite Crew Updates

Deckhand Eddie Lucas

Eddie Lucas became one of the longer-running crew members in franchise history — Season 1, Season 2, and back again for Season 8. He worked as a professional mariner between seasons, holding legitimate maritime certifications he built on during and after the show. Not something every cast member can say. As of the most recent reporting, Eddie has remained connected to the maritime industry professionally rather than pivoting to media work. He’s one of the quieter alumni in terms of public profile, which tracks entirely with his on-screen personality.

Rocky Dakota

Season 3 deckhand Rocky Dakota — born Raquel Donat — generated some of the most chaotic television the original show ever produced. Post-Below Deck, she pursued music and creative work, which she’d discussed as her primary passion during her time on the show. Her Below Deck tenure was short and stormy. Her search volume, apparently, remains significant — which says something about the lasting power of making a memorable television impression even in a limited run.

Joao Franco

Joao Franco from Below Deck Mediterranean built a meaningful post-show presence as a yachting industry commentator and content creator. He’s been open about personal growth since his seasons aired — he was not universally beloved by viewers during his run, to put it mildly — and has done work in the maritime training and education space. He represents something genuinely interesting: a cast member who used the platform to establish credibility within the actual yachting industry rather than departing from it entirely. That’s rarer than it should be.

Chef Mila Kolomeitseva

Mila Kolomeitseva’s Below Deck Mediterranean Season 4 run was brief and notorious. Best remembered for serving guests undercooked chicken while claiming professional credentials she apparently hadn’t earned. She’s the cautionary tale that professional yacht chefs reference when discussing what happens when a commercial charter vessel hires incorrectly. She largely disappeared from public view after her departure — which is probably the appropriate outcome.

The Below Deck Yachts — Where Are the Boats Now

This is the section entertainment outlets skip entirely. We’re not skipping it — because if you actually follow the yacht industry, the boats are half the story.

The original Below Deck series filmed on several vessels across twelve seasons. The Honor — a 164-foot vessel used in early seasons — continued operating as a charter yacht in the Caribbean and Mediterranean market after filming. Charter vessels of that class, built in the late 1990s and early 2000s with aluminum or steel hull construction and interior refits costing $2 million to $5 million depending on scope, have working lives of thirty or forty years when properly maintained. They don’t retire when their television appearances end.

The Eros, another early-season vessel, similarly continued in the commercial charter market. These yachts list on brokerage platforms like YachtCharterFleet and Burgess Yachts at weekly base rates typically ranging from $95,000 to $175,000 depending on season, region, and current refit status. A television appearance, counterintuitively, doesn’t necessarily move the needle on charter demand. What matters to serious charter clients is the crew, the itinerary, and the vessel’s technical specification sheet.

Below Deck Mediterranean has used vessels in the 150-to-180-foot range — operating out of Dubrovnik, Montenegro, Greek island routes, the Turkish coast. The Wellington, used in Mediterranean Season 5 during Hannah Ferrier’s final season, was a 179-foot motor yacht that continued active charter operations post-filming. Vessels of that size — twin MTU 16V 2000 M94 diesel engines, beam around 32 feet, guest capacity of twelve across six cabins — represent significant commercial assets that don’t sit idle between productions.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht operates in a different class entirely. The Parsifal III, a 180-foot schooner used in the first two sailing seasons, is one of the largest sailing yachts in regular charter operation in the Mediterranean. Her rig alone — three masts, composite construction, a sail wardrobe that costs more than most people’s houses — makes her a genuinely distinctive asset. She charters at rates comparable to motor yachts of similar length.

What happens to Below Deck boats between seasons is straightforward if you understand commercial charter operations: they go back to work. A 160-foot yacht burning 120 gallons of fuel per hour at cruising speed, with a crew of ten to twelve drawing professional salaries, does not sit at anchor waiting for Bravo to call. Production companies negotiate seasonal charters of the vessel — typically eight to twelve weeks — and the boat’s management company resumes normal charter bookings around the filming window. Some vessels have been sold since their Below Deck appearances, transferred to new flag states, or undergone significant refits that changed their interior configuration substantially from what viewers remember.

The yachts, like the crew, keep moving. That’s the maritime reality behind the television product — and it’s the angle that makes covering Below Deck from inside the yacht industry genuinely different from covering it from a celebrity tabloid desk.

The Below Deck cast’s “where are they now” story is still being written in 2026. Some stayed in yachting. Some left and built entirely new careers. Some are somewhere in between — charter work in high season, content creation in the off-season, building something the show made possible even if the show itself is behind them. Twelve seasons of television created a lot of lives worth following. We’ll keep following them.