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Another day, another new installment of Bravo‘s Emmy Award-nominated Below Deck franchise! Unlike previous iterations of the series, Below Deck Adventure takes place in Norway, far away from the Caribbean and Mediterranean settings that fans are familiar with. At the helm of the motor yacht Mercury is the strapping Australian Captain Kerry Titheradge, with nearly 30 years of experience working on boats and almost two decades in the yachting industry. With his military family upbringing, it’s no surprise that Captain Kerry is a disciplined leader who takes his job very seriously. However, he’s not a stranger to having a little fun onboard!

In the trailer, Captain Kerry says, “my calling card’s rock n’ roll,” and he’s not kidding! Whether he’s jumping off the boat (more painful than expected) or managing a rowdy crew, Captain Kerry keeps his sense of humor while balancing the pressures of helming a 50M luxury motor yacht. Luckily, he has a talented team behind him with the accomplished Chief Stew Faye Clarke and the dependable Bosun Lewis Lupton. With his guidance, Clarke and Lupton capably lead teams that include (for better or worse) projects like eager stew Kasie Faddah and prickly deckhand Kyle Dickard.

Captain Kerry’s first introduction to Bravo fans everywhere was at this year’s wildly successful BravoCon. He was on a panel entitled “Oh Captain, Our Captains” made up of all five Below Deck captains from across the franchise and series producer Nadine Rajabi. Though we only saw him from afar over the course of the weekend, we got the chance to connect with Captain Kerry recently via Zoom. Find out what he had to say about the show’s “exotic” setting, the crew and one special charter guest who will be very familiar to all the Bravoholics out there.

DECIDER: What made you want to get involved with the Below Deck franchise?

CAPTAIN KERRY TITHERADGE: It sounds like a catchphrase, but honestly, it was the adventure. If I was asked to do Below Deck or Below Deck Mediterranean to fill in for Captain Sandy or Captain Lee, I don’t know if I would’ve done it. I have been there and done the Caribbean and the Med. I’ve got great memories of both and have been to many other places all over the world, but I hadn’t been to Norway. That was exciting for me. It was a challenge.

You have 20+ years of experiences in the yachting industry. What is it about Norway that captured your interest?

It was the unknown. It’s good to shake things up a bit. I enjoy getting out there and getting myself uncomfortable, whether it’s paragliding or riding a motorcycle, or out snowboarding and going down double blacks. I love a challenge. Before I got into the yachting industry, I was on commercial vessels for eight years in Australia. I’ve had an opportunity to be on a variety of vessels doing a variety of things. Norway seemed so exotic to me.

The gorgeous setting of Norway gives the franchise a new wrinkle: the water is freezing. How did that factor play into the charter season?

Well, funnily enough, there’s a lot more activity in the water than you’d believe. These people are crazy. Usually, if I see someone in the water struggling, I’m the first to jump in. But in Norway, I think about it [laughs]. As a crew, you’ve got to be well aware of the dangers of being in that water. When you jump in that water, your body gets such a shock. It took me a long time to take that leap, and it was really painful when I was swimming back to the boat. Unfortunately, the guests still think they’re in the Caribbean, and they want to jump off the top of the boat straight away. I don’t like saying no to guests unless their safety is at risk, so I would make them build up to the big jump by jumping off of several small platforms first to test their mettle and see how their bodies reacted.

In the first episode, we see Lewis talking about administering the “alphabet test” before letting drunk guests go into the water.

That so important in Norway because if you have a bunch of drinks in you, hypothermia sets in much faster than you realize because your body’s numb immediately. We have to be careful that guets don’t get themselves in a dangerous place with their health.

The motor yacht this season is the Mercury. What can you tell us about the vessel?

It’s a fantastic boat. It was actually built in the Netherlands by the Dutch shipyard Amels. They are the Cadillac boat builders of the world. They build yachts to the standards of commercial vessels. I’ve served on the Mercury before, so I was familiar with the boat. This thing can go around the world. You can take it up to the Poles and go through ice. It’s just an incredible vessel.

Faye Clarke strikes me as a very competent Chief Stew. What was it like working with her?

It was great. Faye needed some encouragement at certain times, but who doesn’t? There were some situations where things could have escalated on board, but she kept it together. I am glad she was able to keep going, and she did a fantastic job. She had so much pressure on her. She was in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language, and didn’t have the supplies that stews normally depend on. I didn’t envy her [laughs]!

How does Lewis Lupton stack up against other Bosuns you’ve worked with?

Oh, I’d take Lewis to sea any day. I was so happy to have him. He was an amazing support. I’m serious. I’d offer him a job tomorrow. He’s still young compared to me in the industry, but when I was starting off in his position, I was everyone’s friend, which can cause problems. I saw a lot of myself in him. Throughout the season, you’ll see me coaching him through that and being pretty firm with him. He may not have liked hearing my criticism, but he understood where it was coming from.

We see some conflict with deckhand Kyle in the premiere episode. He sticks a fender in front of your face as you’re trying to get through the narrowest part of the channel, and he blatantly disrespects both Lewis and Nathan. How do you manage a deckhand like that?

Lucky for him, the boys didn’t tell me his responses when they relayed to him that I had asked them to train him. I didn’t see that until the episode one. If I had seen it, he would’ve been off the boat. What worries captains the most is an insubordinate crew member. It’s not a pride thing or an ego thing. It’s very much a safety thing. If we’re having a fire on board and I need a crew member to go grab the hose but he or she decides it’s time to jump off the side, lives are at danger. If you think you know better than the captain, lives are in danger.

Right. Fans get caught up with the drama and the luxury on display in the show, but we sometimes forget that the yachting can be quite hazardous at times.

That’s what makes us a cut above your regular day trip on a boat. We are navigating through an environment that can be very hostile, and at times, wants to hurt you. Our job is to hide those elements from the guests and make the trip seem like it’s Disneyland. I’m not going to walk around and go, “Oh my God, you can die of this and you can die of that, etc.” Imagine that. What a Debbie Downer [laughs].

Since we’re in a totally new environment, how do the activities and outings off-boat work this season?

We anchor the boat close to where the next excursion will be, and then we use our vessel to shuttle the guests and the equipment to shore. Vans then take all the guests and equipment in stages to the location where the activity will take place. One of my favorite experiences had to be an amazing zipline to tea party experience with Heather Gay. We had it at this glass gazebo by a waterfall in Geiranger. I want everyone to see it. It took our breaths away.

Did you run into Heather at BravoCon?

Yes, yes. It was so funny because we were back-to-back talking to people. Suddenly, I heard her voice, and I was like, “I think that’s Heather there.” We spun around at the same time and it was great.

I’m so excited to see Heather on the show. She gets so much love from the Bravo world.

I haven’t watched any of those shows so I really had no idea who she was. Every guest is important to us in the yachting industry, but I never go diving too deeply into a guest’s background. I want to see how they behave on the boat before I make any judgements. I treat everyone with the same respect and kindness and provide them with the best service possible. I pride myself on that.

When Heather came on the yacht, she was just another charter guest. We weren’t star-struck or anything. I want to find out what is important each guest so each one can have an amazing experience. Heather and I got on really well. She has this amazing energy about her. We had some good theme nights for the dinners which made for an even better adventure overall.

As a fellow Aussie captain, had you ever encountered Below Deck Down Under Captain Jason Chambers before BravoCon?

I hadn’t met him before, but Aussies get on when they meet other Aussies. We just do. Maybe not as much as back in Australia [laughs], but when we travel, we’re mates instantly. Australian captains really have safety drummed into us when we’re first starting out. There’s a lot of coastlines out there, but we don’t have a lot of the same resources in other places that we do in Australia even with our small population. In Australia, captains are trained to a very high level because there’s no room for error. We are taught to be strong leaders and, more importantly, learn how not to be pushed to do something we feels is unsafe. That means we have a lot in common.

Jason and I touched base the night before BravoCon and immediately started swapping war stories.

Is there any other Bravolebrities you met at BravoCon that you would love to take out as a charter guest?

I’d love to have Andy Cohen come out. I reckon that’d be amazing. Plus, there are some awesome people on the Southern Charm crew that I got on really well with. I’d love to say I remember all their names right now [laughs], but I don’t. I met a lot of awesome people while I was there. They’d all have a fantastic time on charter.