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How sinking of luxury yacht off Sicily unfolded
One man has died and six people are missing after a luxury yacht sank in freak weather conditions off the coast of Sicily.
The 56m British-flagged Bayesian was carrying 22 people - 12 passengers and 10 crew - when a heavy storm that created waterspouts struck early on Monday.
Fifteen people were rescued and a search operation for those unaccounted for - who include the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch - is continuing.
Here is what we know about the tragedy so far and how it unfolded.
What happened to the yacht?
The Bayesian was struck by a sudden and powerful storm in the early hours of Monday morning, witnesses say.
It was reportedly anchored to the sea bed outside the harbour at Porticello, a small fishing village to the east of Palermo, when what the Italian coastguard described as a "violent storm" hit.
The storm was so fierce that it caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air and mist, to appear over the sea.
The vessel disappeared beneath the water at about 05:00 local time (04:00 BST).
A doctor treating survivors said the ship "capsized within a few minutes".
- Follow live updates here
- 'For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea' - yacht survivor
- Who are the missing and rescued?
- What might have caused yacht to sink
- Divers battle 10-minute dive window and debris in yacht search
Witnesses told Italian news agency Ansa that the Bayesian’s anchor was down when the storm struck, causing the 72m (236ft) aluminium mast to break in half and the ship to lose its balance and sink.
However, divers on the search and rescue team have said the ship was "practically intact" on the seabed, raising questions as to whether the mast was broken.
The ship's unusually tall mast may have contributed to its sinking, according to Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the mast acted almost like a sail in the strong wind "especially with it being so high".
The extreme winds could have caught the mast and pushed the yacht over, he said.
Karsten Borner, captain of a nearby boat, said after the storm had passed, the crew noticed the yacht that had been behind them had disappeared.
"We saw a red flare, so my first mate and I went to the position, and we found this life raft drifting," he told Reuters.
His crew took on board some survivors, including three who were seriously injured.
Another witness, Fabio Cefalù, captain of a trawler, said he was about to go out on a fishing trip when he saw flashes of lightning so he stayed in the harbour.
"At about 04:15 we saw a flare in the sea," he said, according to the EVN news agency reports.
"We waited for this waterspout to pass. After 10 minutes we went out to the sea and we saw cushions and all the rest of the boat [that had sunk], and everything which was on the deck, at sea. However, we did not see any people in the sea.”
Another fisherman described seeing the yacht sinking "with my own eyes".
Speaking to the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, the witness said he was at home when the tornado hit.
"Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very big," he said.
Shortly afterwards he went down to the Santa Nicolicchia bay in Porticello to get a better look at what was happening.
He added: "The boat was still floating, then all of a sudden it disappeared. I saw it sinking with my own eyes."
One of the survivors, British tourist Charlotte Golunski, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica how she held up her one-year-old daughter Sofia to stop her from drowning.
She said the two of them and her partner James survived only because they were up on deck when the yacht sank.
They were woken by “thunder, lightning and waves that made our boat dance”, and it felt like "the end of the world" before they were thrown into the water.
Charlotte said: "For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves."
She added: "I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.
"It was all dark. In the water I couldn't keep my eyes open. I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me was the screams of others."
What is the latest with the search?
Six passengers remain missing and the Palermo coastguard says the search and rescue operation is continuing "incessantly".
The search began on Monday and specialist divers have been working at the site since early on Tuesday morning.
One diver told Italian media the yacht was "practically intact" on its side at the ocean's basin, about 50m below the surface.
The ship's hull is obstructed with furniture and various objects, the Italian fire and rescue service has said.
Divers are looking for ways to access the yacht's cabins, but they have just 10 minutes to search on each dive before they need to return to the surface, the Italian news agency Ansa has reported.
A 1cm thick glass window is also being considered as an entry point.
Francesco Venuto, a spokesperson for Sicily's civil protection agency, told the BBC on Monday rescue teams fear the bodies of those missing "must be" in the boat.
"We've been searching all day with helicopters and boats, we've found nothing. That wouldn't make sense. In these conditions, we should have found something by now," he added.
A specialist caving search and rescue diving team arrived from Rome on Monday, hoping to "achieve results" either during the night or by Tuesday morning at the latest, the director general of Sicily's civil protection agency, Salvatore Cocina, said.
On Monday, the UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch sent a team of four investigators to carry out a preliminary assessment of the Bayesian's sinking, the BBC understands.
Who was on board?
There were 22 people on board when the storm hit, including 12 passengers and 10 crew.
The body of one man has been recovered. He has not been formally identified, but the Palermo coastguard said he was the ship's cook. His nationality has not been confirmed.
Among the six people still missing is 59-year-old tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, known by some as the "British Bill Gates".
Mr Lynch founded software giant Autonomy in 1996 and was awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006.
In June, he was cleared of conducting a massive fraud relating to an $11bn (£8.64bn) sale to US company Hewlett Packard.
Afterwards, he told the BBC in an interview he had been able to prove his innocence only because he had the wealth to pay the enormous legal fees required.
The other missing people include Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo.
Mr Lynch's wife Angela Bacares is among the 15 people to have been rescued, with eight of those receiving treatment in hospital, the Italian coastguard said.
Charlotte Golunski, her husband and daughter Sofia were also rescued and were unharmed, but taken to hospital for check-ups.
She said they had been on the yacht with a group of colleagues.
The daily Il Giornale di Sicilia newspaper reported the vessel had mostly British passengers on board, but also people from New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Ireland and British-French citizens.
A doctor based in Palermo said the "very tired" survivors were "constantly asking about the missing people".
Dr Domenico Cipolla told Reuters that one woman he treated described the trip as a "corporate holiday", with some of those on board "very young".
"There were a lot of work colleagues, friends, a few husbands, wives, or a couple of friends who had joined in," he adds.
What is a waterspout and why do they form?
A waterspout is similar to a tornado and can form over oceans, seas or large lakes.
The western half of the Mediterranean has experienced severe storms since the middle of last week.
Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, a zone of bad weather passed by the north coast of Sicily.
BBC Weather forecaster Matt Taylor said: "A waterspout is a tornado that has occurred over water rather than land.
"They can form during intense storms, on the base of cumulonimbus/thunder clouds.
"Turbulence, and the wind blowing in slightly different directions around the cloud, can cause rotation under the base of the cloud and the spout to form.
"Like tornadoes, they bring powerful winds, but instead of picking up dust and debris they cause a water mist around the column of rotating air."
What is the Bayesian, and who owns it?
The superyacht can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites, and is listed for rent for up to €195,000 (£166,000) a week.
It was built in 2008 by Italian company Perini Navi.
The Bayesian's registered owner is listed as Revtom Ltd, which is based on the Isle of Man.
The yacht's name is understood to derive from the Bayesian theory, which Mr Lynch's PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune was based on.
Mr Lynch's wife Ms Bacares is named as the sole legal owner of Revtom, which is registered in the Isle of Man.
The Bayesian completed a number of sailings in recent days, calling at various ports in Sicily, according to ship-tracking website VesselFinder.
A spokesperson for Camper and Nicholsons International, the firm that manages the 2008-built boat, told BBC Verify: "Our priority is assisting with the ongoing search and providing all necessary support to the rescued passengers and crew."
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Questions for Investigators Trying to Unravel Mystery of Luxury Yacht’s Sinking
The investigators searching for answers about the shipwreck, leaving seven dead, face questions about extreme weather and possible human error or problems with the yacht itself.
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By Alan Yuhas
More than 180 feet long, with a mast towering about 240 feet and a keel that could be lowered for greater stability, the Bayesian luxury yacht did not, in the eyes of its maker, have the vulnerabilities of a ship that would easily sink.
“It drives me insane,” Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which in 2022 bought the company that made the ship, said after its wreck last week. “Following all the proper procedures, that boat is unsinkable.”
But the $40 million sailing yacht sank within minutes and with fatal results: seven dead, including the British technology billionaire Michael Lynch, his teenage daughter, four of Mr. Lynch’s friends and a member of the crew. Fifteen people, including the captain, escaped on a lifeboat.
Mr. Lynch had invited family, friends and part of his legal team on a cruise in the Mediterranean to celebrate his acquittal in June of fraud charges tied to the sale of his company to the tech giant Hewlett-Packard.
The Italian authorities have opened a manslaughter investigation, searching for answers from the survivors, the manufacturer and the wreck itself. They face a range of questions and possible factors.
An ‘earthquake’ in the sky?
When the Bayesian sank around 4 a.m. on Aug. 19, the waters in its area, about half a mile off the Sicilian port of Porticello, were transformed by an extremely sudden and violent storm, according to fishermen, a captain in the area and meteorologists.
But what kind of storm is still a mystery, compounded by the fact that a sailing schooner anchored nearby did not have its own disaster. Also unclear is whether the crew was aware that the Italian authorities had issued general warnings about bad weather the night before.
Karsten Börner, the captain of the nearby passenger ship, said he’d had to steady his ship during “really violent” winds . During the storm, he said, the Bayesian seemed to disappear behind his ship.
Severe lightning and strong gusts were registered by the Italian Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology, according to Attilio Di Diodato, its director. “It was very intense and brief in duration,” he said.
The yacht, he said, had most likely been hit by a fierce downburst — a blast of powerful wind surging down during a thunderstorm. His agency put out rough-sea warnings the previous evening, alerting sailors about possible storms.
Locals have said the winds “felt like an earthquake.” A fisherman in Porticello said that he had seen a flare go off in the early-morning hours. His brother ventured to the site once the weather had calmed about 20 minutes later, he said, finding only floating cushions.
The Italian authorities have so far declined to say whether investigators had seen any structural damage to the hull or other parts of the ship.
Open hatches or doors?
The boat executive, Mr. Costantino, has argued that the Bayesian was an extremely safe vessel that could list even to 75 degrees without capsizing. His company, the Italian Sea Group, in 2022 bought the yacht’s manufacturer, Perini Navi, which launched the ship in 2008.
Mr. Costantino said that if some of the hatches on the side and in the stern, or some of the deck doors, had been open, the boat could have taken on water and sunk. Standard procedure in such storms, he said, would be to switch on the engine, lift the anchor and turn the boat into the wind, lowering the keel for extra stability, closing doors and gathering the guests in the main hall inside the deck.
At a news conference on Saturday, almost a week after the sinking, investigators said the yacht had sunk at an angle , with its stern — where the heavy engine was — having gone down first. The wreck was found lying on its right side at the bottom of a bay, about 165 feet deep.
12 guests occupied the yacht’s six cabins. There were also 10 crew members.
Open hatches, doors and cabin windows could have let in water during a storm, according to the manufacturer.
Open hatches, doors and
cabin windows could
have let in water
during a storm,
according to the
manufacturer.
Source: Superyacht Times, YachtCharterFleet, MarineTraffic
By Veronica Penney
Water pouring into open hatches or doors could have contributed to the sinking, experts say, but that on its own may not account for the speed at which such a large boat vanished underwater.
Asked about the hatches at the news conference, the authorities declined to comment on whether they had been found open at the wreck.
The authorities have also not specified whether the boat had been anchored, whether it was under power at the time or whether its sails had been unfurled.
A retracted keel?
The Bayesian had a keel — the fin-like structure beneath a boat that can help stabilize it — that could be retracted or extended, according to its manufacturer. On some yachts, keels can be raised to let the large vessel dock in shallower water, and extended downward to help keep a boat level.
But like the hatches, the status of the keel alone may not explain why a large ship sank with such precipitous speed. Investigators have not disclosed what divers may have seen at the wreck, aside from saying divers had faced obstacles like furnishings and electrical wiring in tight quarters. Officials want to raise the wreck to better examine it, a process that may take weeks.
Human error?
Ambrogio Cartosio, the prosecutor in charge of the case, said at the news conference that it was “plausible” crimes had been committed, but that investigators had not zeroed in on any potential suspects.
“There could be responsibilities of the captain only,” he said. “There could be responsibilities of the whole crew. There could be responsibilities of the boat makers. Or there could be responsibilities of those who were in charge of surveilling the boat.”
It remains unclear what kind of emergency training or preparation took place before the disaster, or what kind of coordination there was during it. So far, none of the surviving crew members have made a public statement about what happened the night the ship sank.
Prosecutors said they want to ask more questions of the captain and crew, who have been in a Sicilian hotel with other survivors. They said that neither alcohol nor drug tests had been performed on crew members, and that they have been allowed to leave Italy.
Prosecutors also said they were also investigating why the captain, an experienced sailor, left the sinking boat while some passengers were still on board.
Besides possible manslaughter charges, the authorities are investigating the possibility of a negligently caused shipwreck.
The bodies of five passengers were found in one cabin, on the left side of the yacht, the authorities said. The five were most likely trying to flee to the higher side of the boat and were probably sleeping when the boat started to sink, they said.
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