Croissants, meditations, and mayhem: the real daily routine of Captain Sandy on Below Deck Med
She's up at seven every morning
We got an inside look into Captain Sandy Yawn‘s daily routine while filming season 11 of Below Deck Mediterranean through an interview with Business Insider. If you’ve ever wondered what life is like aboard the chaotic charter, she just told us everything. Here’s the real daily routine of Captain Sandy on Below Deck Med.
Up at seven
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Sandy’s on deck by seven am and stays there until the last crew member turns in for the night. Maritime law requires eight hours of rest in any 24-hour window, but how those rest hours are used is entirely up to her. Typically, she’ll carve out a break in the middle of the day. Often involving the gym.
“I’m a gym person,” she says. “I like going where people are.” Back home in Florida, she and wife Leah have two SoulCycle bikes and a full home gym. During filming season 11 in Croatia, she was working out daily. Partly to counteract the croissant-heavy diet she’d fallen into while arriving early to prep the boat. “I was there a week before filming, and man, did I put some weight on.”
Her morning routine is rooted in sobriety
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Before the coffee, before the crew briefing, Sandy hits her knees. She’s been sober for years and credits the 12 step programme as genuinely life-changing. Every morning she reads a meditation and asks for help for the day to “be a good human being and not selfish.” Every evening she reviews her day too, another part of the 12 steps. She checks whether she’s hurt anyone or owes anyone an apology.
It’s not just a private ritual either. It’s an ethos that shows up directly I how she leads. She recalls snapping at her first officer after a stressful phone call. Sandy immediately pulled back and apologised. “He went from happy to sad, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this guy.'” She said sorry on the spot, which is the 10th step in action.
“As the captain and leader on board, my biggest challenge is keeping consistency with the crew,” Sandy says. She says that her superpower is leading like a puppy: “If you’ve got a puppy and you want to teach them how to swim, you go swimming. The puppy’s going to watch you on the steps. Next thing you know, they’re going to crawl in that water and start swimming with you.”
Six weeks filming, eight weeks away
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Filming Below Deck Mediterranean is a different beast to a regular yacht season. Charters usually have breathing room between bookings. Here, it’s back to back from day one. Sandy arrives a full week before cameras roll to adjust to the time zone and get to know a brand new crew and vessel. “I need at least four days to prepare.”
The filming block itself runs six weeks, but Sandy’s usually away for eight weeks total. The reward at the end? Her wife Leah coming out to see her.
Life off the boat
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Sandy was candid that earlier this year she had to tell Leah straight: they needed to have more fun. Too much work, not enough living. “I’m an experiences person. I want some nice clothes, of course, but I would rather spend money on experiences,” she explained. She’s booked and busy with the Monaco Boat Show, Hamptons for a week, Newport, and Boston.
At home, their desks face each other in their office. With a whiteboard in there with list of things she has to do. Sandy is the organised one in the family, with Leah being the more creative one. “I’m very organised because I work on a boat,” Sandy explains. “You have to know which manual to grab when you’re in trouble.”
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