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Moonbeam of Fife III, 1903

Built at Fairlie by Fife

The 30 metre, gaff cutter  Moonbeam of Fife III  epitomises beautiful classic yachts at their finest. Launched in 1903,  Moonbeam of Fife  is still going strong on the classic yacht regatta circuit despite being more than a hundred years old. The William Fife-designed yacht is constructed in wood with an oak hull and superstructure, while her interior joinery is well-kept mahogany. The historical yacht  Moonbeam of Fife III  is currently for sale.

Tuiga, 1909

Built by the renowned William Fife shipyard in Fairlie on the Clyde estuary in Scotland,  Tuiga  was commissioned by the Duke of Medinaceli, a close friend of the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, and has had 10 owners in 106 years. HSH Prince Albert II decided to buy her in 1995.  Tuiga  has been participating in classic yacht regattas ever since and is now the flagship of the Yacht Club de Monaco, crewed by YCM members.

Mariette, 1915

Built by Herreshoff

The classic 42 metre twin-masted schooner _Mariette of 1915 _was built by Herreshoff in the United States 100 years ago. Age has not withered her, but  Mariette of 1915  has undergone a few refits in the Pendennis yard at Falmouth in recent years: in 2010 and again in 2012 in preparation for the Pendennis Cup, in which she took first prize in the St Petroc Traditional Class as well as being crowned overall winner. In 2014 she returned to Falmouth once more for minor works.

Creole, 1927

Built by Camper & Nicholson

Now owned by the Gucci family, this beautiful wooden schooner has had a colourful history. Commissioned by wealthy American Alan Cochran and launched in 1927,   Creole  has had a number of different owners and also been called  Vira.  When she was known as  Magic Circle , she was transformed into a minesweeper during the Second World War, having previously competed in a number of regattas and attended previous America’s Cup events. In the 1970s she was used by the Danish government for sailing training in the rehabilitation of drug addicts before being bought by the Gucci family in 1983.

Endeavour, 1934

Arguably the world’s most famous J Class,   Endeavour  was the British challenger in the 1934 America’s Cup, but was beaten by the Harold Vanderbilt-owned  Rainbow .  Endeavour  was commissioned by Sir T.O.M. Sopwith, who was keen to ensure that this yacht was the most advanced design possible. With his experience designing aircraft, Sopwith applied aviation technology to  Endeavour ’s rig and winches and spared nothing to make her the finest vessel of her day.

She swept through the British racing fleet and into the hearts of yachtsmen around the world, winning many races in her first season. Though she did not win the America’s Cup she came closer to doing so than any other challenger.

Since 1934, she has often led a perilous existence, even being sold to a scrap merchant in 1947 only to be saved by another buyer hours before her demolition was due to begin. In 1984, American yachtswoman Elizabeth Meyer bought  Endeavour  and she was transformed and rebuilt by Royal Huisman.  Endeavour  sailed again on June 22, 1989, for the first time in 52 years. J Class yacht   Endeavour  is now for sale.

Elena, 1910

Built by Herreshof

In 1910, Morton Plant commissioned 55 metre   Elena  to be designed by American naval architect Nathanael Herreshoff, the so-called “Wizard of Bristol”, who made his name designing sailing yachts for America’s elite. Plant’s brief was to the point: he wanted a schooner “that can win”.

Herreshoff gave  Elena  a slightly deeper keel than preceding designs of that time, lowering her centre of ballast, which improved her windward ability.  Elena  won most of her early races against the cream of the American schooner fleet and in 1928 came her crowning glory, victory in the Transatlantic Race. In 2009, she was rebuilt using the original plans for the first  Elena.

Black Swan, 1899

Originally designed by Charles Nicholson and built in 1899 at Camper and Nicholson in Gosport, England,  Black Swan  started life as  Brynhild  with a yawl rig. She won a number of races at the beginning of the 20th century, including the King’s Cup. Over the years, she has undergone several changes and different rig configurations, and at one stage she was renamed  Changrilla . She was rechristened  Black Swan  in the 1960s and, today, after an extensive restoration project at the Beconcini yard in La Spezia, Italy, she is now carrying a gaff-rig, designed by the Faggioni Yacht Design Studio and built by Harry Spencer.

Mariquita, 1911

Built by Fairlie

Another beautiful classic yacht from Fife,  Mariquita  was launched in 1911. The 38.16 metre sailing yacht was designed and built for the industrialist Arthur Stothert. As part of the 19 metre Big Class racing that re-emerged in 1911, this gaff-rigged cutter is said to have inspired the J Class yachts that came after her.

She raced competitively against her brethren from 1911-1913, but by the 1950s,  Mariquita  was the last in the 19 metre class remaining. She was restored in 1991 and received a further refit in 2004. A star on the classic yacht racing scene,  Mariquita  is now for sale.

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Traditional Seamanship: Why Old-fashioned Sailing is Best

Old-fashioned sailing provides deep connection with the ocean and with one another, Ellen Leonard tells us.

Old-fashioned sailing in a sparkman & stephens yawl.

My first long ocean voyage, a circumnavigation of the globe, had more in common with voyaging in the post-war years than it did with contemporary ocean sailing. My husband Seth and I made that voyage in the first years of the 21st century; therefore, if we had been much wealthier, we could have sailed in a style not greatly different from that which is common today. As it was, our experience would have felt familiar to such iconic voyagers as the Smeetons or the Pyes.

Our sloop was built in 1968, to a 1954 design. Specifically, she was an imitation of the famous Sparkman & Stephens yawl Finisterre (winner of three consecutive Bermuda Races), although she was a sloop rather than a yawl. Despite being 38 feet overall, and 27 feet on the waterline, she displaced 24,000 pounds. She had a relatively shallow-draught keel, with a centerboard that could be lowered for upwind performance. She was low to the water, had sweeping overhangs and a narrow stern, and a small cabin with a traditional layout. Her chart table was expansive and her bunks were narrow. Although her hull was constructed of solid fiberglass, she had a solid mahogany cabin, coamings, and toerail; her ports, stanchions, and most of her other fittings were bronze. Even her propeller shaft was bronze. Her engine was a Perkins 4.107 that leaked an embarrassing quantity of oil. The boat herself leaked, through the chainplates, coamings, winch bases, toerail, and many other places. We slowly but surely resolved all these leaks over the course of our circumnavigation, but they were there for a time, just as they had been for many sailors over the centuries.

Bit by bit, small upgrade by small upgrade, Seth and I did bring ourselves into the current century, or at least into the late 20th century. By the time we dropped the hook back in Maine, after four years of sailing around the world, we had solar panels, electric light, a Pactor modem for email over the single sideband radio, and even a minuscule refrigerator. But at the beginning, our only concession to modernity – or rather, the only piece of it we could afford – was a small black-and-white GPS . This showed us merely our latitude and longitude; the rest of our navigation we did on those large paper charts that today are pretty much relegated to wall decoration.

Our electrical capacity was limited to the very small battery bank we had, only 270 amp hours. We used this to power the little GPS, our VHF radio, and our navigation lights while underway. Those three little bulbs, however, drew enough amperes that we were concerned about the electrical draw on a long passage, especially on our Pacific crossing, a month at sea from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. So we went to the tremendous effort and expense of installing a small wind generator while we were in Panama. With this extra power, we were later able to install an electronic depth sounder (what luxury!) and then much later on, the tiny fridge, just big enough to keep any fish we caught from going bad before we could eat it.

A couple of years later, in Australia, we replaced the wind generator with solar panels, realizing that we disliked the necessity of anchoring in windy places, and also the fact that the blades had maimed at least one poor seabird. The increased reliability of our electricity, especially in sunny places like Queensland, led us to install electric cabin lights. Up until that point, however, we had lived as sailors for centuries had done, with an oil lamp to light the cabin after dark.

We had two fresh water tanks under the settee berths; for the first year we pumped our water at the galley sink with a hand pump; when we reached New Zealand, we upgraded to a foot pump. In ports where we could easily obtain fresh water, we would fill a “solar camping shower” bag with it, letting the black bag sit in the sun to heat the water and then washing ourselves with it up on deck. This was rather pleasant in deserted tropical anchorages, but was less enjoyable in colder locations, or in crowded harbors where we felt a bit exposed, even wearing our bathing suits. On passages we used our fresh water only for drinking and cooking; a shower at sea was a bucket of saltwater.

We rowed to and from the shore, aboard our eight-foot faux lapstrake solid fiberglass dinghy. We cooled our boat in warm places simply by opening the hatches; we warmed ourselves in cold places simply by layering on clothing or blankets. We always sailed. We used our oil-leaking engine only to maneuver into tight marinas or harbors; often we sailed right on and off our anchor, and we never motored at sea. We used less than 40 gallons of diesel fuel per year. If there was no wind – as there wasn’t for six days off Australia’s Northern Territory – we just drifted.

For the first year and a half of old-fashioned sailing, we obtained weather forecasts simply by looking at the sky and the barometer. Then, upon leaving New Zealand, we joined a single sideband radio net, on which a man back in New Zealand reported weather forecasts. Another year and a half after that, upon leaving for South Africa from the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, we finally upgraded to receiving GRIB files over SailMail, via a Pactor modem hooked up to our SSB. With the advent of our Pactor modem, we also finally had primitive, text-only email communication with the outside world. Before that, voice communication with other radio stations – other boats with SSB or VHF – had been our sole contact with the world beyond our little sloop. Indeed, on our Pacific crossing, we only had the VHF on which to communicate, meaning we could speak only to those vessels that came within 25 miles of our position. Over the course of that month-long passage, a month that just the two of us spent out of sight of land, we spoke with only one ship.

There is a certain element of difficulty in living in this way. There are times when you are very tired, or the wind is blowing strong, and you wish you had an outboard motor for the dinghy. Sometimes the dishes you washed in the light of the oil lamp turn out not to be all that clean in the light of day. Your hair itches after weeks of seawater bucket “showers.” Drifting out of sight of land, in a dead calm, in tropical heat, for a full week, taxes your mental stamina in way not familiar to most modern Westerners. Reading the sky and the barometer to estimate your own weather forecasts requires an attentiveness and observation power beyond what most of us are used to. Living without refrigeration restricts your diet in unpleasant ways. Sailing without modern aids like radar, AIS, chartplotters, and electronic autopilots makes for quite a bit more work and more vigilance. This is especially true in thick fog, even more so when that fog is hiding a busy roadstead like Cape Town, South Africa. Hauling a 60-pound anchor up by hand, especially in deep anchorages, when you have many feet of chain to haul up as well, requires serious strength. And making ocean passages aboard a low-freeboard, heavy displacement boat, especially in high winds and steep waves, makes for a very wet ride.

But it also provides a unique satisfaction. Like a lengthy mountain trek or climb, it shows you that you are capable of discomfort and effort beyond what you may have expected. Just as the author and pioneering aviator Beryl Markham found when she left home as a very young woman, it’s liberating and satisfying to discover that, “I never had less and I never needed more.” Combined with the marvelous experiences of offshore voyaging – the seabirds wheeling in the pink sky as the sun rises after a dark night of rain squalls; the flying fish shimmering over the waves; the delicious taste of a tuna you caught yourself; the feathery tops of palm trees at the end of a long passage; spinning yarns with fellow sailors; Sunday brunch with a local family on a remote island; the quiet stillness of a protected cove – sailing like this, in a style many people today would find primitive, provided Seth and myself with a unique joy.

Old-fashioned sailing: Connecting with the Natural World

I think that the true reason for this was that the simplicity of it necessarily connected us more fully with what we were doing, with the natural world through which we were moving. Creature comforts, as lovely as they are, in some ways form a barrier between us and our world. Finding a balance between the two is important: after all, Seth and I did not cross the Pacific on a raft, Kon-Tiki style. We had bunks with bedsheets, a gas burner on which to cook hot meals, and enough tins and dried food to last us for months. But we lived much closer to the elements than we would have done aboard a more modern, kitted-out yacht. It’s hard to feel removed from the ocean, and from the act of sailing across its vast expanse, when green water is coursing down the decks and drenching you on your watches in a gale. When we reached an island or a bay or a harbor, we would carefully nose around it before dropping the hook; hauling up the anchor by hand had given us a great appreciation of the depth of the water in which we anchored. Drifting in calms instilled deep gratitude for the gift of wind. The dim light of the oil lamp meant that our daily routines were much more in keeping with the rising and setting of the sun, and we appreciated full moon nights much more than we ever had before. Seawater showers and a poor diet offshore made the simple pleasures of bathing in fresh water and eating fresh fruit in port into supreme joys.

I think that slowing down our lives, reducing them and simplifying them, added enormously to the joy and wonder of our ocean sailing and the beauties of each new landfall. Perhaps the biggest contribution to this was our lack of communication with the outside world. Satellite communications back then – and I am only speaking about less than 20 years ago – were prohibitively expensive. Internet connection on a sailboat was unheard of, not even quite believable, a bizarre extravagance that megayachts were rumored to have. SSB radio with slow modems and text email service was as high-tech as it really got, and Seth and I didn’t even have that for the first three years. We communicated with those at home sporadically: via letters posted from a port with a post office; via emails sent from internet cafes; and sometimes via phone, in conversations curtailed by the expense of a long-distance connection from pay-phone booth. And so we lived much as people had for generations, socializing with the people in our immediate vicinity, making new friends when we went to new places. In short, we lived in each moment in the place in which we found ourselves. At sea, that meant with only each other, and the sea and sky and the wild creatures, for company. The simplicity of that, the slowness of it, the immediacy and intimacy of it, resets your mind in way, enables a degree of focus and calm that’s missing in the fast pace of the digital world.

And so, while Seth and I have upgraded now to slightly larger, cold-molded wooden sloop, with pressure water, an anchor windlass, and even radar, our floating home remains relatively simple. Thus, sailing remains the time and place in which we reconnect with the natural world, with the ocean we are sailing upon, with the wildlife we observe, with the people we meet, and with each other.

Show Me More:

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Anna: The modern classic yacht that conceals some serious technology

• January 21, 2020

Anna is a custom 65ft Spirit of Tradition yacht with some very high-tech features concealed beneath her classic exterior, reports Alison Langley

When approaching Anna moored at the dock, it’s hard to immediately tell whether she is a restored classic or a recently built replica. In fact, neither is true; Anna is a new build designed to include both the virtues of a classic yacht and the technical achievements of a modern cruiser.

Anna ’s story began two decades ago when owner Tony Merck began thinking about stepping up from small classic daysailers, like the Herreshoff 12 1⁄2 and the Bjarne Aas-designed International One-Design, into a larger cruiser that could maintain a classic aesthetic.

Merck had watched the birth of the Spirit of Tradition genre and had followed boats like the Pedrick-designed carbon beauty Savannah , as well as the Joel White-designed W-Class day racers. But his ambitions lay less with recreating an early 20th Century racer. Instead he admired the sturdy, able cruisers from past designers such as Fife and Alden, while he also loved the modern construction and high specification of this new generation of classics.

Anna ‘s classically sumptuous cockpit

In the summer of 2015, Tony approached Robert Stephens of Stephens Waring Yacht Design and work began on proposal sketches for the boat that would become Anna at their design offices in Belfast, Maine. Stephens has had a lot of experience with modern wood construction, having worked in the Spirit of Tradition genre since before it even had a name.

Tony and his wife Ann knew they wanted her to be built in Maine, but were not set on a yard. Robert Stephens and business partner Paul Waring took Tony on a guided tour of five top Maine yards before deciding to go with Lyman Morse, of Thomaston. Coincidently, Tony had played soccer and rebuilt old cars with yard founder Cabot Lyman in prep school some 50 years before.

Systems expertise

Lyman-Morse is well-respected in the custom boat world, but were not then as well known for building wooden boats as many other Maine yards with expertise in cold-moulded wood construction . Lyman-Morse did, however, have a reputation for high-quality glassfibre and carbon boats, but won the job thanks to their systems expertise and a modern approach to construction, including the integration of old-school hand craftsmanship with cutting-edge equipment like five-axis CNC machines.

Article continues below…

Marilee: The inside story of the 1926 Herreshoff NY40’s remarkable restoration

When the New York Yacht Club commissioned the new NY40 one-design class in 1916 Nathanael Herreshoff’s objective was to design…

Revolver: Bruce Ritchie’s gentleman’s racer blends traditional and modern craftsmanship

“I wasn’t expecting this,” said Michael Ritchie when his 83-year-old father Bruce showed him the lines he had drawn up…

I was hired by Ann Merck and Lyman-Morse early in the project to photograph the entire project from start to finish, and make a coffee table book about Anna as a surprise gift for Tony. Project manager Lance Buchanan made sure my visits were timed so I could capture the build at the right moments.

Anna was built using a wood composite cold-moulding system. Her hull is planked in four layers of wood – an inner layer of tongue-and-groove Douglas fir strip planking, screwed and glued to the laminated Douglas fir frames. That’s followed by two layers of diagonal veneers, and a final layer of longitudinal strip planking, the whole sheathed in two layers of biaxial/mat glassfibre and epoxy.

Her deck is built as a sandwich, separate from the hull: plywood laid over a temporary mould, covered with CoreCell foam, then another ply skin, with a laid teak weatherdeck. Once interior components were in place the deck/cockpit/deckhouse assembly was installed as a unit.

Anna ‘s wineglass transom

Modular build

Lyman-Morse built Anna ’s interior in modules, allowing them to fabricate the galley, head, and main saloon off the boat and then lift each completed section into the hull. When each module was installed, the bulkheads mated against the curvature of the hull perfectly, with no trimming or additional tweaking required. Anna ’s construction adage became, literally, ‘measure once, cut once’.

Since Anna ’s design brief called for a classic ambience, that meant that hundreds of feet of hydraulic lines, electrical wires, and even halyards needed to be concealed beneath the yacht’s joinery. The designers at Lyman-Morse and Stephens Waring worked closely to come up with innovative ways to hide these wiring runs and mechanical spaces. By creating a complete 3D model of Anna they were able to plan these tiny crevices before construction began.

Stephens Waring brought in interior designer Martha Coolidge to contribute her fine eye to the style and detail of the interior, which was painstakingly developed with a combination of hand-coloured sketches, computer renderings and tactile examples. “I think we went through 17 iterations of the brass light-switch covers!” recalls Stephens.

8,212ft of tongue and groove (Douglas fir) planks were used for the inner layer of the hull

Anna is intended for easy daysailing, and her deck layout reflects this. A roller-furling boom from Southern Spars makes simple work of the large, high aspect ratio mainsail. A self-tacking jib will be the go-to sail for most of her career.  Anna ’s captain, Jim Murphy, enjoys sailing with guests aboard. “I love to call ‘Ready about’ and watch the guests ask ‘What happens now?’ and see their faces when I say ‘Nothing’, and just spin the wheel,” he comments with a grin.

But ease of sailing has not dulled the experience. Murphy explains: “Under sail, Anna is like a wonderful dancer. Her motion, her response to the sea and helm are like no other boat that I have sailed. An absolute joy.” For Anna ’s forays onto the racecourse, she switches to the ‘race jib’, a 100% working jib that fits on the furling headstay. A Code Zero and masthead asymmetric round out her inventory.

Hidden high tech

Anna ’s traditional style masks lots of high-tech systems. Sail handling systems are all push-button: electric winches, roller-furling boom and jib, and hydraulics to drive the sail controls. Two hidden systems maintain her classic lines while adding 21st Century functionality: a below deck anchor deployment system, and a side-boarding platform that eases access from a tender and provides a swimming ‘porch’.

A hydraulic boarding platform enables easy access to the water for all generations. The step-stool ladder deploys automatically

Beneath the saloon is a state-of-the-art engine room with turbodiesel motor, lithium ion batteries and multi-compressor air conditioning. A touchscreen nav plotter in the raised saloon disappears into the furniture with a touch of a button. Her deck saloon windows are power-operated at rear and sides, allowing airflow and communication with people sitting in the cockpit at the push of a button.

Following her launch in April 2018, Anna has completed two sailing seasons, split between Rhode Island, Maine , and Nova Scotia , with a good mix of day sailing, Spirit of Tradition racing, and overnight sails. She’s earned silverware in both Sprit of Tradition races and design awards but, more importantly, she’s fulfilled the ambition her owners had 20 years earlier to expand their world of classic sailing.

Specification

LOA: 19.96m (65ft 6in) LWL: 14.58m (47ft 10in) Beam: 5.13m (16ft 10in) Draught: 2.28m (7ft 6in) Displacement: 25,855kg (57,000lb) Sail area: 190m 2 (2,040ft 2 ) Built: 2018 Design: Stephens Waring Yacht Design Builder: Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding Co

About the author

First published in the January 2020 edition of Yachting World.

Home Modern classic

Welcome to Leonardo Yachts. In close collaboration with the leading designers in the yachting world such as Hoek Design and Dykstra Naval Architects, we build daysailers that embody the true essence of a modern classic yacht. Our modern classic sailing yachts combine the timeless appeal of a classic yacht with the cutting edge technology of a modern cruiser. Enjoy the exceptional comfort and unrivaled performance or our Spirit of Tradition yachts, without making compromises on beauty and elegance. Our modern classic sailing yachts truly are the ideal combination of old and new…

Like a true modern classic yacht, our Eagles all have a classic look with the characteristic long overhangs, classic yacht lines and high gloss mahogany varnished exterior woodwork. The looks are completed by the Edson classic steering pedestal with Ritchie stainless steel compass and the stainless steel 7 spoke steering wheel with high gloss varnished mahogany rim. The interior of our modern classic sailboats can be made in different styles from matt varnished mahogany for a truly classic look or a classic styled white interior with mahogany or teak finish. But also light oak is possible or full teak wood, whatever your preference would be.

The classic lines and looks are integrated in a modern sailing yacht. The designs are made with the latest technology giving the yachts very good and easy to handle sailing characteristics. The modern keels in fin shape can be even upgraded for more performance to a bulb shaped deep draft keel making them fast and easily manouvrable. The modern technology can also be found in the electric package for the winches by which adjusting the sails becomes as easy as pushing a button. The sails from North Sails also hold the latest technology with the 3Di design, making the sails very shape stable to increase the sailing performance. To complete a race set-up, a carbon mast and boom can be added to get the most out of the speed. Standard, our modern classic yachts are delivered with Volvo Penta engines, but off course electric propulsion is available for all models.If you share our passion for modern classic sailing, we would be honoured to help fulfil your aspirations. Together we build the most beautiful Spirit of Tradition boats ever seen.

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A Waterspout Was Seen When a Luxury Yacht Sank. What Is It?

Witnesses reported seeing the tornado-like phenomenon hit the Bayesian, a sailing yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday.

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By Eve Sampson

What caused the sinking on Monday of a sailing yacht carrying the British billionaire Mike Lynch and 21 other people off the coast of Sicily is still unknown. But some attention has focused on observations by witnesses, who described seeing a small tornado-like column known as a waterspout forming over the water during an abrupt and violent storm as the vessel sank.

Fifteen passengers on the 180-foot yacht, the Bayesian, escaped on a raft before being rescued by a neighboring cruise ship. The body of the ship’s cook was recovered on Monday and six people remain unaccounted for , including Mr. Lynch and his daughter Hannah, according to officials with Sicily’s civil protection agency.

Prosecutors in the nearby city of Termini Imerese have opened an inquiry into the cause of the sinking.

Here is what to know about waterspouts, a surprisingly common weather phenomenon that may have helped sink the luxury yacht.

What are waterspouts?

Waterspouts are columns of spinning air and moisture — similar to tornadoes over water, according to the National Weather Service .

While some form in fair weather, and are aptly called fair weather waterspouts, another more dangerous variety called tornadic waterspouts develops downward from a thunderstorm. These tornadic waterspouts can either form as regular tornadoes over land and move out to sea, or form in a storm already over a large body of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association .

Fair weather waterspouts are weak, often dissipate quickly and do not cause major damage, according to the agencies, but tornadic waterspouts are more often associated with high winds, dangerous and frequent lightning, and hail. The Italian authorities recorded strong winds and intense lightning activity at the time the yacht went down.

How common are waterspouts?

Experts say waterspouts may be more common than tornadoes, but because oceans are so vast, they are more difficult to track — and as difficult to predict.

“The Mediterranean is possibly one of the places where waterspouts are most likely around the world due to the warm ocean surface and a climate that is very susceptible to thunderstorms throughout the summer and autumn,” according to a statement by Peter Inness, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Inness pointed to a 2022 study by scientists from University of Barcelona , which found that waterspouts occurred more frequently over warmer sea surfaces. The North Atlantic ocean has been unusually hot for over a year, repeatedly reaching record highs for the time of year , according to data from the oceanic association.

The International Centre for Waterspout Research on Monday said on X , the platform formerly known as Twitter, that it had confirmed 18 waterspouts near Italy in recent days, and several fishermen in the area of the accident told Italian media that they had witnessed a waterspout near the yacht.

What may have happened?

Karsten Börner, the captain of the nearby boat that rescued the 15 passengers, said in an interview that he saw the Bayesian about 490 feet away before the wind and lightning picked up.

While it was difficult to see what happened amid the storm, “my theory was that she was capsized first and then went down over the stern,” he said.

Towering over 237 feet tall, the Bayesian mast was one of the tallest aluminum masts in the world and it also had a special keel that could be raised or lowered, according to its manufacturer, Perini Navi. A keel is the downward-extending centerline underneath a boat that can help stabilize the vessel.

“In this case, having a tall aluminum mast would not make it the safest port to be in case of a storm,” said Andrea Ratti, associate professor of nautical design and architecture technology the Politecnico di Milano.

He added that “a lot of questions will remain until we have other elements at our disposal.”

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.

Eve Sampson is a reporter covering international news and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Eve Sampson

Five bodies found inside superyacht that sank off Sicily

PORTICELLO, Sicily — Divers recovered four bodies Wednesday from inside a superyacht that sank in a sudden storm off Sicily , Salvatore Cocina, director of the island's Civil Protection Agency, confirmed to NBC News.

Cocina later confirmed to Sky News that a fifth body had been found and was being brought to shore. One passenger remains missing.

The identities of the bodies were not immediately released. Their recovery follows a dayslong search in the deep waters off Italy where British tech tycoon Mike Lynch  and several others were believed to be trapped in the hull. Fifteen of the 22 people aboard survived.

The rest had been missing since early Monday, when the Bayesian was caught in the storm anchored off the coast of Porticello, a village near the Sicilian capital city, Palermo.

The body of the ship’s cook, identified as Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian Antiguan national, was recovered Monday. 

On Wednesday, NBC News witnessed what appeared to be at least three body bags being lifted from fire department boats after they pulled into port at Porticello. It was unclear whose bodies they were. Some were later transferred to ambulances and driven away from the dock.

Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda, are also missing. 

The Bayesian is owned by a firm linked to Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who was among the survivors rescued by a nearby vessel after they got into a lifeboat.

Built by the Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi in 2008, the U.K.-registered yacht could carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist boating sites. Its nearly 250-foot mast is the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to CharterWorld Luxury Yacht Charters.  

Regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” Lynch was  acquitted of fraud by a San Francisco jury this year, stemming from the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.

The Mediterranean sailing vacation was designed to be a celebration for Lynch, who brought Bloomer, who testified in his defense, and Morvillo, one of his U.S. lawyers, on the trip.

Lynch's co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was not aboard the Bayesian, but in what appears to be a tragic coincidence, a  car struck and killed  him Saturday as he was jogging in a village about 68 miles north of London, local police said.

Claudio Lavanga and Claudia Rizzo reported from Porticello. Henry Austin reported from London.

Claudio Lavanga is Rome-based foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Claudia Rizzo is an Italy based journalist.

Henry Austin is a senior editor for NBC News Digital based in London.

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Sailing yachts like Mike Lynch's are 'unsinkable bodies', CEO of boat manufacturing firm says

Bayesian superyacht which sank off Italy is an "unsinkable" vessel, Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, said.

By Ashna Hurynag, news correspondent and Eleonora Chiarella, producer

Thursday 22 August 2024 15:27, UK

Vessels like Mike Lynch's stricken superyacht are "unsinkable", according to the chief executive of the firm which makes and sells them.

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, told Sky News there are no flaws with the design and construction of the Bayesian superyacht which capsized in a storm off the coast of Porticello, Sicily, on Monday.

Five bodies were found by divers on Wednesday - taking the number of confirmed dead to six.

The Italian Sea Group also owns the firm that built British tech tycoon Mr Lynch's Bayesian, and Mr Costantino said the vessels "are the safest in the most absolute sense".

"Being the manufacturer of Perini [boats], I know very well how the boats have always been designed and built," he said.

"And as Perini is a sailing ship... sailing ships are renowned to be the safest ever."

He said their structure and keel made them "unsinkable bodies".

Read more on this story: Why search of superyacht wreck has been so difficult Hero mum 'slept with baby on deck when storm sank yacht'

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Mr Costantino said news of the sinking "put me in a state of sadness on one side and of disbelief on the other".

"This incident sounds like an unbelievable story, both technically and as a fact," he said.

It is understood Italian prosecutors investigating the incident are continuing to hold interviews with the survivors.

On Tuesday they questioned the captain for more than two hours to help reconstruct what happened and provide useful technical details.

Four British inspectors are also in Porticello and have begun a preliminary assessment of events.

It is understood they will look at all relevant aspects of the incident, including the design, stability, and operation of the vessel. They will also examine the effects of the weather conditions experienced.

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Twenty-two people were on board the vessel, 15 of whom were rescued - including Briton Charlotte Golunski and her one-year-old daughter Sofia.

Divers will resume efforts on Thursday morning to bring ashore a body they found earlier. One more person remains missing.

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• Superyacht sinking

Published on August 22nd, 2024 | by Editor

Casualties and questions for luxury yacht

Published on August 22nd, 2024 by Editor -->

Why the Perini Navi built 184-foot luxury yacht capsized at anchor , with just 15 of 22 people on board surviving, has attracted international news attention. That the yacht was owned by British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who is among the confirmed deaths, has added to the intrigue.

The incident occurred early on August 19 off the coast of Porticello, Sicily, with CNN reporting how the yacht named Bayesian rapidly sank after its mast, one of the world’s tallest, broke in half during a violent storm. As divers search the area, a fifth body was brought to shore on August 22.

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, which makes and sells vessels like Bayesian, has questioned why its crew were not in a “state of alert” when the well-forecasted storm hit, suggesting human error was behind the boat going down.

Local fishermen who witnessed the Bayesian superyacht sink say that the vessel was in the wrong place at the wrong time, while other sources have said how the yacht’s keel was not fully lowered. The yacht now rests at a depth of 150 feet.

For details by BBC News on what might have caused the yacht to sink, click here .

Tags: Bayesian tragedy , Perini Navi , tragedy

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