Below Deck Mediterranean‘s Nathan Gallagher and Gael Cameron were determined to spend time together without cameras after a flirty night out.
During the Monday, June 10, episode, Gael started to get concerned about whether her long-distance romance with an offscreen boyfriend would last. Nathan, meanwhile, was around waiting to swoop in after previously hinting at his attraction toward Gael.
The crew celebrated the end of their first charter by going out to dinner, which is when Gael expressed her doubts to chief stew Aesha Scott.
“At the moment, our relationship is a little bit of a long shot. We are still trying to figure out this whole trust factor,” she admitted on the show. “I know he’s a bit of a flirtatious person and what happens when he is on a boat full time with some really attractive girl?”
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Aesha, who is currently engaged to Scott “Scotty” Dobson, tried to offer Gael some advice, adding, “It is scary especially because there’s so much cheating in yachting and I’ve always hated it. But you deal with it when it happens and up until that moment, just don’t worry about it.”
In a confessional, Aesha elaborated on why she couldn’t relate to Gael. “Scott and I have been together for three and a half years. There has not been one time where I have ever been paranoid,” Aesha noted. “So I just think if you are worried about each other then surely it is not right.”
Nathan was also privy to the “interesting” conversation between Aesha and Gael. As the night progressed, Nathan and Gael appeared to be flirting at a club.
“I haven’t given you a strawberry yet,” Gael told Nathan. “Can I do it tonight?”
A producer subsequently asked Nathan whether strawberry was a “euphemism,” to which Nathan replied, “A strawberry is just a wee bit of fruit that we share. You will eventually find out.”
In footage from the premiere episode, Nathan was seen telling Gael she was “trouble already” when he saw her take a strawberry from the chef’s pantry.
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“It’s just a strawberry,” Gael replied to Nathan, who said, “You could steal me a strawberry in there. I will hold you to it.”
When the crew returned to the boat at the end of the episode, Nathan appeared to make a move on Gael. “Do you want to keep me company? We can sneak the strawberry,” he said as several cameramen were seen on screen. “We need to lose these cameras.”
Nathan and Gael returned to their individual cabins where they initially went to bed. It didn’t take long for Nathan to text Gael while their cabin mates were fast asleep.
“Where should we meet that has no cameras?” read a message from Nathan to Gael. “The starboard bow locker has no cameras. Let’s go there.”
Gael asked Nathan to tell her when he was there and if he got “caught.” She was then filmed leaving her cabin and heading to the front of the boat.
“What is right and what is wrong? Am I doing the right thing or the wrong thing?” she said in a confessional. “Maybe I like him a little tiny bit. Maybe I just want to hang out with him a little bit. I’m not harming anyone.”
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Nathan messaged back that the coast was “all clear” before a “To Be Continued” title card was shown. There was no trailer for the next episode included at the end.
Some Below Deck fans might have gotten some deja vu while watching Gael and Nathan‘s plans to interact without getting caught. During season 5 of Below Deck — which aired in 2015 — Eddie Lucas and Raquel “Rocky” Dakota started hooking up secretly by meeting in the laundry room because there were no cameras there at the time.
Eddie, who had a girlfriend while filming the show, denied Rocky’s claims at first. But by the end of the season, he revealed to the whole crew that he was having sex with Rocky. Chief stew Kate Chastain later cited Rocky and Eddie’s offscreen hookups as the reason why production added cameras to the laundry room.
“They ruined it for everyone,” Kate quipped during an interview with the Daily Dish in 2020. “This is why we can’t have nice things, Eddie and Rocky.”
Below Deck Mediterranean season 9 airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
