South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Rosbach shares stories of life before TV fame
Fort Lauderdale’s Captain Lee Rosbach is known for his tough and gruff style on Bravo’s “Below Deck” reality series. He’s also known to adoring fans as the “stud of the sea.”
But Rosbach has another distinction as the sixth season of his reality show airs (the season premiere was Oct. 2).
Captain Lee is an author, and his new book, “Running Against the Tide: True Tales from the Stud of the Sea,” co-written with Michael Shohl, was recently published.
Written in a laid back, first-person style, Rosbach shares some of the lessons he learned before TV fame. He also explains how he discovered his sea legs in Turks and Caicos, where he had his own restaurant with his wife Mary Anne.
Here are some highlights from the book:
He was a welder
In 1973, Rosbach was a welder for Chicago Bridge and Iron.
“I loved forcing myself out of my comfort zone,” he wrote about the gig, which paid $9 an hour and involved climbing smokestacks and water towers or what he referred to as the “high steel” up to 800-feet high. The job allowed him to support his wife and five kids.
And by taking on projects in Florida, Mississippi and Georgia, he said he could work year round. He also spent five years working Midwest Steel in Indiana. When work began drying up and the plant closed, he said he became a bartender at a biker’s bar that he also managed.
Call of the sea
Bartending led to an opportunity to run his own
restaurant in Turks and Caicos. Running low on cash in 1980, he saw an ad in a dive shop for a sailboat captain looking for a deckhand to sail to St. Martin from Turks and Caicos. The job paid $50 per day at sea plus a return ticket home. Although he discovered that he was vulnerable to seasickness, Rosbach described finding his new calling.
“I loved it from the moment I got on board,” he writes. He decided to get a captain’s license which required 720 days of sea experience. One job paid $250 to deliver a boat called the “Morgan” from Turks and Caicos to the British Virgin Islands. Coming out of a night of rough seas and approaching a palm-covered
island, Rosbach recalled “there is nothing like finding a little island of peace and warmth and light after a cold dark night to give you a sense of order in the world.”
Dangers of fishing and diving
Fishing and diving come with risks. One time, a nurse shark slammed into his face and knocked off his face mask while he hunted for lobster. Another time while fishing for grouper, Rosbach struggled with a 12-pound catch.
During that fight, the grouper’s dorsal fin struck the inside of Rosbach’s knee and part of the fish’s spine lodged inside his
knee. Rosbach said he bled continuously and lost some feeling in his leg. Since it was a Saturday and there were not a lot of options for medical attention on Turks and Caicos, Rosbach said the only doctors he found immediately available were a vacationing veterinarian friend and a doctor who was playing tennis. And the only space available to treat Rosbach was a dental office.
“Great, I was going to the dentist’s office to get treated by the off-the-clock doc and assisted by the off-the-clock vet,” recalled Rosbach, who was given a couple of aspirin for the surgery to remove “a thin, needlelike spine from my knee.” He ended up with 12 stitches.
Photo throwbacks
Yes, the captain used to have dark hair and matching beard. The book has a small section of photos of Rosbach during his early charters to St. Barts, the Bahamas, Key West, and Fort Myers. There are also photos of the Columbus Club, the restaurant and bar that he and his wife ran in Turks and Caicos in the 1980s.
TV captain
Rosbach wasn’t looking to be on TV. “I already had a job. Why would anyone want my ugly mug on TV?” he recalled thinking when he was told about the proposed yachting series during a charter show in Miami. Still, he agreed to at least give the show’s cast and crew a boat ride to St. Martin.
Rosbach said that when the show’s original captain didn’t have a lot of experience on sea, Rosbach was then asked to stay on the yacht as a behind-thescenes “secret captain’’ for insurance purposes to guide the TV captain. “You can’t make a show about a yacht with a pretend captain,” Rosbach recalled at the time. After passing a psychological evaluation and background check, Rosbach ended up becoming the captain of the show and the rest is reality TV history.
“Below Deck” airs at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on Bravo.