Why did the Bayesian yacht sink in 16 minutes?

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting outside on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old man, who has been a fisherman since he was 10 years old, saw the first lightning. “I heard thunder and wind and decided to go home,” he said.

“As the storm grew, everyone woke up. The water was coming into my friend’s house.”

Around 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who was going out that Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a fire.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – he found only cushions and floating wooden planks.

A luxury yacht called the Bayesian, moored a few hundred meters away, had sunk.

Everything happened in 16-minute crisis windowchaos and torture, which made the sleepy fishing port of Sicily the center of world news.

All but seven of the 22 Bayesian passengers were on board when the boat began to capsize. Some did not make it.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She talked about clutching her baby in the air with all her strength so that she wouldn’t drown. “It was dark all around me,” he said, “and the only thing I could hear was the cries of others.”

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by the captain of a nearby sailboat. He is trapped inside a sinking Bayesian environment of his colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s leading technology entrepreneurs, called “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Mr Lynch had taken family, friends and colleagues on a luxury holiday on his luxury yacht: a 56 meter (184ft) luxury yacht that won design awards and had the longest aluminum mast in the world.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on fraud charges over the corruption of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. in public opinion.

Three days after the boat sank, his body was recovered by divers from the wreck.

A day later, the body of his daughter Hannah, 18, who was supposed to start studying at the University of Oxford next month, was found.

Among the other dead are the president of investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the boat’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survives.

The family released a statement speaking of their “indescribable grief”, adding that they were “devastated and shocked”.

How quickly the super yacht sank while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm unscathed has left experts stunned.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors say they have opened an investigation into possible charges of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

District prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that although the investigation is still early and no one is investigating, “there is a high probability that he is guilty.” It could just be the captain. It could be the whole team … we are not cutting anything”.

A small team of British maritime investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors say they believe it now the explosion was weather shipwreck: a localized, strong wind that descends in a thunderstorm and spreads in an unexpected direction.

That contradicts previous reports that identified the cause as waterspoutor a small hurricane at sea.

Either way, it’s clear that the extreme weather played a big role.

The investigative team focused on the behavior of the captain, James Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand. He survived along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, referring to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: many have done that. Strong winds and rain were predicted, followed by days of extreme heat. The head of the company that developed Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me that he was sure that there were many mistakes on the board.

He said: “Back on the boat, the hatch must have been left open, but maybe the side to pour water in.

“Before the storm, the captain had to close all the hatches, raise the anchor, start the engine, point the wind and lower the hatch.

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

“That would stabilize the ship, they would be able to cross the storm and continue their journey freely,” he said.

Rescuers instead found Bayesian debris 50 meters underwater its nearly 10-foot-long keel is raised.

If it had been used, it would have helped combat the wind whipping the Bayesian’s 75 meter tall aluminum mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told La Repubblica newspaper that gusts of 100 kilometers per hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize a ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“Bayesian has been a model for many other ships because of its stability and high performance,” said Mr. Costantino. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If the water hadn’t come in, it wouldn’t have sunk.”

He told me that there were 16 minutes between the ship’s power outage at 03:56 – indicating that water had flooded areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the time you sank.

That time, as well as any steps taken to mitigate extreme weather, will be scrutinized by investigators, especially once they get hold of the ship’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship inspectors, similarly believes that the flaws could make the boat vulnerable to extreme weather conditions.

“There were supposed to be two crew members taking turns to watch over the night, because of the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out in his boat – about a third of Bayesian’s size. “And it should have been tied up in the harbor, not at sea.”

It is not known how many people, if any, were waiting that night.

From his boat, we gained rare access to the area where Bayesians plan.

On our side, an Italian police boat was circling, warning us. Suddenly, there was a rush of divers, as more rescue ships arrived.

We didn’t know it at the time – but they had just found more bodies.

It was a very difficult task for the teams to bring back those trapped in the accident. Given its depth, at 50 meters underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing to safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote-controlled vehicles that could operate under the sea for long periods of time.

At a press conference over the weekend, rescuers said passengers who were trapped inside during the sinking took shelter in cabins on the left side of the ship, where the last air bubbles appeared.

Five bodies were found in the first house on the left, they said, and the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third house on the left.

Access for emergency crews was extremely difficult as the boat remained in good condition and its furniture obstructed access.

The Coast Guard compared it to “an 18-story building full of water”. When Ms. Lynch’s body was brought to the shore, the paramedics at the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven who died were taken to the morgue for examination.

Rescuers will now need to decide what – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which will no doubt provide important clues as to what happened. But bringing Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost €15 million (£12.7m) according to some estimates.

Although the divers’ arduous task of recovering the dead is over, investigators’ painstaking hunt for answers has just begun.

They and the survivors hunkered down in a hotel near Porticello, which is strictly off limits to journalists. The guards immediately asked us to leave.

Solving this mystery of what happened to Bayesian will be important not only to help the loved ones of the victims reach some kind of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

James Cutfield’s brother, the captain, said he was a “respected sailor” who had worked on boats all his life. Did the seasoned sailor somehow make a series of disastrous mistakes? The Nautilus trade union, which represents sailors and captains, has called for restraint in ruling on Bayesian workers.

“Any attempt to question their behavior without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy,” it said.

The world’s media has begun to abandon Porticello, slowly returning to the silence of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats wander among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat at a few restaurants along the shore.

But what happened this past week surprised and shocked many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We have never seen anything like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”