The charter map as the whole story
Twelve charter seasons, three return trips to the same Sint Maarten anchorage, and two coastlines visited exactly once. This ranks every season by how much the destination did the work — and how much got left entirely to the crew.
No spoilers · reviewed
The 12, in order.
- #01The franchise's first trip outside the Atlantic basinBelow Deck anchored in Phuket's Andaman Sea for its longest run yet — twenty episodes against limestone islands and aquamarine bays no Caribbean season could match. The location alone reset what the format could look like.
- #02Overwater bungalows give the format its most striking postcard yetFrench Polynesia's turquoise lagoons and remote anchorages pushed the show's visual register further than any Caribbean run before or since. The seventeen-episode order gave the location room to actually register on screen.
- #03A single charter route becomes three islands for the first timeThe third Sint Maarten season didn't stay in Sint Maarten — charters hopped to Anguilla and St. Barths too, the franchise's first multi-island route. More coastline, more logistics, one crew's charter season.
- #04The postcard backdrop that finally matched the format's ambitionThe Bahamas gave Below Deck a location as confident as its cast — clear water, a hierarchy running at full tilt, and a season that first felt like the format operating exactly as designed.
- #05A new captain gets a coastline that's entirely his ownGrenada's spice-island green and reef-rich waters gave the incoming captain era a visual identity distinct from a decade of prior seasons — the location doing real work to signal a fresh chapter.
- #06The origin season sets the visual register everything else answers toRough around the edges, but Sint Maarten's clear Caribbean water gave the format the backdrop it would return to again and again. Every later season is, in some way, in conversation with this one.
- #07The same port proves a location can be reused without going staleAn entirely new crew returned to Sint Maarten's familiar waters and showed the format didn't need a fresh coastline to feel alive — just a fresh hierarchy working the same anchorage.
- #08The Piton-shadowed backdrop plays second fiddle to a structural firstSt. Lucia's volcanic peaks make for the season's best postcard shot, but the real news here is a mid-season captain change — a shape no other Below Deck run has repeated.
- #09Sheltered anchorages give the format a second, calmer textureThe BVI's protected waters and open passages read differently than Sint Maarten's, and the season used that shift to sharpen its hierarchy drama rather than lean on scenery alone.
- #10A volcanic coastline gets a compact, fast-moving season to matchSt. Kitts' green volcanic shores frame the shortest Lee-era run — fifteen episodes that move through the charter rotation at pace, without much room for the location itself to breathe.
- #11A familiar Caribbean port right after the franchise's furthest reachEnglish Harbour's sheltered waters brought Below Deck back to safe territory right after Thailand's detour — a capable backdrop, but a deliberately unadventurous one.
- #12St. John's waters are beautiful and almost beside the pointThe U.S. Virgin Islands gave the show reliable footage without ever becoming part of the season's identity — proof the format can run on hierarchy friction alone if the coastline doesn't pull its weight.
More lists in this vein
↩ cross-canon listAway from home turfSome formats run their whole season on one fixed set — a brokerage floor, a share house, a single city. These are the seasons that broke from it on purpose, sending the whole cast somewhere unfamiliar for a week to see what the group was actually built on.cross-canon list ↪The competition leaves the countryA judged competition built around one home base doesn't relocate for a single trip. These are the seasons where the whole operation — kitchen, panel, cameras — packed up and staged a real stretch of the season somewhere the format had never filmed before.