Important questions for investigators

The 56m UK-flagged Bayesian was carrying 22 people – 12 passengers and 10 crew – when it was hit by a storm that caused a burst of water on Monday.

Five bodies have been found when the boat crashed, one is still missing.

It will be a long time before we get answers to how the luxury superyacht sank.

Speculation has been rife about what went wrong, with fingers pointing at the captain, the crew, and at fault on the boat itself.

But experts have told the BBC that this could be a “black swan” weather event – and that no one is at fault.

Here are the important questions that investigators will be asking as they look into this tragedy.

One of the main questions facing the investigators is the role of the boat’s keel.

The keel is the large, fin-like part of a boat that protrudes from its base.

The bottom of the keel – which is the lowest part of the boat – contains a large weight, the lamp, which keeps the boat stable. When the wind pushes the boat to its side, the keel rises through the water until – like a saw – its weight pushes the boat back.

In a Bayesian-sized boat, the keels are usually designed to be retracted so that the ship can anchor in shallow areas, such as a harbor.

When the keel is raised, it makes the boat very unstable.

In this case, a Bayesian wreck was found at a depth of 50m (164ft), suggesting there was no reason the keel needed to be retracted.

But that doesn’t mean the captain or crew were wrong.

“Even without the keel coming out completely, the ship is stable and only the entry of more water can cause it to sink,” said a spokesman for the Italian Sea Group, which owns the company that builds Bayesian, according to the Telegraph.

Investigators will want to know whether the keel was “high, low or in the middle,” said Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a fellow at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sailing Technology.

The Captain of the Bayesian, James Catfield, is reported to have told Italian media that he did not see the storm that hit the Bayesian.

But we know that bad weather was predicted earlier.

Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society, said on Tuesday that the crew should have ensured that all guests were awake and given them lifejackets, given the bad weather.

One survivor is reported to have told paramedics that the ship began to sink just two minutes after he was asleep.

Bad weather is one thing, but a waterspout is another thing entirely. And it’s not something the workers could have predicted.

An expert at the scene in Sicily told Reuters that an early focus of the investigation would be whether the boat’s crew failed to close the hatches before the bad weather hit.

But for a boat of this size, open hatches alone probably wouldn’t be enough to make a Bayesian dive, experts say.

There are other water entry points around the boat known as “down-flooding points”, which are there to allow the engine room to ventilate, among other things.

“Obviously there will be questions about the workers and what happened and whether they were prepared,” said Mr Souppez.

“But think it is important to remember that the ship sank in a few minutes, so in the middle of the night so that the crew could keep so many people on board alive, put out a fire, and work in the heat. right now it’s hard work,” he said.

“It’s very difficult to say exactly what happened here,” said Dr Paul Stott, a fellow of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects.

“But it is unlikely that the crew would react in any way to save the boat in such bad weather”

A doctor who treated the survivors said the ship “captured within minutes”.

The key question is how exactly that happened – and how it happened so quickly.

“For a ship to sink, especially at that speed, you are looking at water making its way inside the ship along its entire length”, said Mr Souppez.

“Ships like this are not really designed to stand for any length of time at 90 degrees,” said Mr Souppez.

“So if a ship finds itself at 90 degrees, you can expect water to come in regardless of whether the hatches are open or not. Although it is clear that it will speed up the process.”

Some speculated that the waterspout flying over the Bayesian might have “popped” off the mast, dumped a lot of water on the boat – and quickly sunk it.

Witnesses described seeing the water form during a storm before the sinking of the Bayesia.

Most people know what hurricanes look like – they are spiraling columns of destructive winds, moving from the base of the clouds down to the ground.

According to BBC Weather, waterspouts are also like that, but they are on water rather than land. As ocean temperatures rise due to climate change, there are concerns that they may become more common.

According to the International Center for Waterspout Research, there were 18 confirmed waterspouts off the Italian coast on August 19th alone.

But the chance of someone hitting the ship directly – as was thought to be possible here – is still very low.

“I think the important thing will be that even if there were problems with the opening of the keel or the hatches, maybe you are still looking at the risk of bad weather,” said Mr Souppez.

“This is possibly the safest modern design that has ever experienced unplanned adverse weather,” said Mr Stott.