Captain Lee Rosbach gained streaming stardom as the colorful “boat daddy” on Bravo’s “Below Deck Series” but hit choppy waters when he was abruptly dismissed from the show after Season 10. The Fort Lauderdale resident’s career has since sailed full speed ahead with “Deadly Waters with Captain Lee,” a true-crime drama where he narrates some of the oddest, dumbest, most heinous murders on the water.
The inaugural eight episodes initially appeared on NBCUniversal Media Group’s Oxygen True Crime network but can be found streaming on Peacock and a multitude of other services such as Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.
Captain Lee was profiled by Lifestyle in a two-part series in October 2021 when he was with the Bravo series and he provided an update during a recent interview with Lifestyle Media Group Editor-in-Chief Kevin Gale. The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
When we interviewed you in 2021, Below Deck was still running. How did you feel about your run with the show and then how it ended?
I certainly didn’t expect it to end. I was shocked. Never saw it coming, came right out of left field.
Did they explain why?
We’ve all heard those same things: “I think we’re going to move in a new direction.” It’s funny because the numbers are great, the ratings are great, and I told him, “I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been fired for doing a good job.” He said, “Well, you’re not being fired.” I said, “Oh. I must have misunderstood. I thought five minutes ago I had a job, and now I don’t; what am I missing here?” But no, I didn’t appreciate the way that it was handled. I was very pleased with my run. I had 10 really, really good years with a lot of really, really good people who were great to work with.
So what did you do in the interlude and how did Deadly Waters come about?
Well, I did a little thing called “Couch Talk with Captain Lee and Kate.” That was fun, where we got to sit around the sofa, have cocktails and make fun of Bravo shows. I had a pretty good time with that and got paid for it.
We talked a couple of years earlier about this crime show and nobody seemed to have any interest in it at that point. Two years later they said, “Well, maybe we should pull it off the shelf, dust it off and take another look at it.” So, they did and we did eight episodes, all of which did really, really well as far as the numbers went. I’m looking forward to it coming back next year. At least I hope it does.
Where did the ideas come from?
They do a deep dive into murders that have taken place. Some are really kind of confusing because you look at how they were perpetrated and you just go like, “No, nobody would think of that. Nobody’s that dumb.” As you dig deeper into it, you realize, “Well, yeah, they are that dumb.” For all of ’em, it’s such a terrible waste of human life and when you try to dig into why it happened or put some rhyme or reason to it, it’s virtually impossible. You just can’t understand what went on in somebody’s mind that caused them to go off the deep end.
I read that you said that a lot of the perpetrators don’t even really know much about being on the water.
They don’t know about boats. They don’t know about water. They don’t know about the ocean. They wouldn’t know a tide or current if it ate ’em for dinner.
The first episode was called “Ghost Ship.” These guys chartered a boat, “Joe Cool,” in 2007. They wanted to go to Bimini, which is 50 miles from Miami Beach, and they were paying $4,000, which is a huge red flag. Nobody would pay $4,000 then for a one-way trip. They didn’t want to fish. They just wanted to be dropped off. It doesn’t take long to get into the Gulf Stream current, which runs north up the Florida coast at about five to seven knots. They get out into the Gulf Stream. They kill all four people on board — the mate, the captain, the deckhand and his wife — and then they turn and head south. Now they’re going against the current. Their plan is to go to Cuba. The throttles are wide open against the seven-knot current and they couldn’t understand why they ran out of fuel. They ditch the boat and they take the life raft and they try to get to Cuba and they’re some 30 miles away. They got caught by the Key West Coast Guard sector.
What would you say your favorite aspects of the show are?
Seeing justice done and seeing what part the ocean plays in dealing with karma. You thought you were all that smart and you did these horrendous acts, just horrific, and you thought you were getting away with it. Then, all of a sudden, here comes Mother Nature. All of a sudden, karma either busts you and you end up in prison for the rest of your life, or you end up dead.
We had a story of a guy that to celebrate an anniversary, he takes his wife out and kills her. He rents a speedboat. It’s flat, calm. He says, “We got hit by a rogue wave.” Well, they were the only boat out there that got hit by a rogue wave because none of the rest of them did.
One guy actually went so far as to rent a plane after he killed this girl. He rented a plane with his buddy who later copped a plea but couldn’t live with his conscience and ended up killing himself. No loss to the world there. He has her body wrapped up in chains and then cinder blocks. He takes it up 2,000 feet high and throws her out of the airplane. Well, by the time she hits the water, she’s doing about 140 miles an hour, and the cinder blocks might as well be Jell-O at that point. They just come apart, so she doesn’t sink and that was his undoing. You were going to use Mother Nature and you were going to use the ocean to cover up or to help you perpetrate this horrific crime and almost every time Mother Nature comes up and goes, “Not so fast, big boy. We’ve got other plans for you.” I love the karma part of it
Did you have a favorite episode in the first season?
God, there were three or four of ’em that stuck out, but the Joe Kool one was probably the most disturbing because a man, his wife and two of his best friends died for nothing, for nothing. There was no game plan. They were going to go to Cuba. Have you ever seen anybody trying to smuggle themselves into Cuba?
Is there something that surprised you the most about doing this show, which is based on crime, as opposed to the previous show where it was sort of the ongoing actions of your crew and the passengers?
It was totally different. When I did “Below Deck,” all I had to do was be myself. We didn’t have any script. What happened, happened. But with this, there’s a certain script that you have to follow because there’s a chronological timeline. There’s other people that don’t get involved until later on in the story and you have to narrate the story. I had never had any experience being a host or a narrator, and it’s a totally different world. They hired an acting coach to teach me how to be a good host and how certain words need a little bit more inflection and you should pause a little longer after a statement like this. We would just go over every script until I was like, “I’m sick of this.” But I wanted to get it right. I had a great coach. Her name is Marki Costello. Her granddad was Lou Costello of the famous duo comedy duo, Abbott and Costello
I read about the tragic loss of your son from drugs. I can’t imagine the grief you went through, but you seem to try and do something positive in the aftermath. I read about you trying to get a barge for a rehab center. Is that something you’re still working on?
We’re still working on it. We’re exploring all possibilities, and it’s so G– damn frustrating because you just can’t get people to get serious about it. I went and I testified in front of Congress and a very bipartisan committee. A lot of their children were opioid addicts and had survived. Some didn’t. Retelling my story to them was probably one of the hardest things I’d ever done because I wanted so badly for Josh’s story to make a difference, and I was so disappointed when it didn’t.
It’s just people pay lip service to it and that’s it, and it’s on to the next catastrophe. But we lose an average of 270 to 300 people every day to a drug overdose, and 70 percent of those are opioids. That’s like an airliner falling out of the sky once a day. How much do you think our government would have their G– damn knickers in a wad if we were dropping an airplane out of the sky once a day?
A lot of it’s fentanyl poisoning, where they think they’re taking one thing, but it’s been laced with fentanyl to make it cheaper and to make it more potent, and more addictive. Kid goes to a party with a bunch of his friends, maybe it’s his first year in college, his first frat party. Somebody says, here, I got a Xanax, we’re all going to do it. So, he pops the Xanax and he’s dead.
He’s not a junkie. He’s not an addict. He made a bad choice and he paid for it with his life. You try to tell people that and I don’t know how to get through to people. I keep speaking about it. Every time somebody will give me a forum to get up and tell my story, I’ll do it. And I just hope that some days, some way it’ll make a difference. It’ll maybe save some person’s life.
On a more positive note, you have this stud thing going on, and I see you have some boat daddy-labeled merchandise on your website (captainlee.com). Do you have older guys thanking you for showing older guys like us can be studs, too?
Damn right. There’s no age limit as far as qualifying for being a stud at all or being a boat daddy. I think being a boat daddy, though, you do need a boat or at least access to one
