Authorities investigate if the open hatches caused superyacht to sink By Miriam Kuepper and Katherine Lawton Published: 09:17 BST, 21 August 2024 | Updated: 09:17 BST, 21 August 2024 e-mail Advertisement Italian authorities have opened an investigation into whether hatches left open by crew members on tech tycoon Mike Lynch's superyacht caused it to sink so quickly. The £30million Bayesian went down in a matter of minutes after being struck by a freak waterspout while it was anchored off the coast of Porticello in Sicily at on Monday morning. While 15 people were rescued in the aftermath of the disaster, six people are still missing, including billionaire Mr Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and a boss at Morgan Stanley bank.
The search for those who are not accounted for has entered its third day this morning, with rescue divers continuing their efforts to reach the cabins in the hopes of finding them. An engineer has claimed the missing passengers could still be alive in air pockets 164ft below the surface, meaning divers - who can only remain underwater for ten minutes per dive due to the depth of where the wreck is - are competing in a race against time. Their operation has been hampered by difficulty getting into the ship with divers forced to smash their way through a 3cm-thick porthole to gain access to one area and other parts of the wrecked vessel blocked by furniture.
One expert at the scene said an early focus of the official investigation into the tragedy, launched by prosecutors in nearby Termini Imerese, would be whether the yacht's crew had closed access hatches into the vessel before the storm struck. Investigators would look at whether appropriate measures had been taken, given the forecasts for bad weather overnight, and if any of the crew members are criminally liable. It comes as: Video shows the Bayesian during Mike Lynch's 'victory' trip being filmed by curious onlookers; Investigators are probing whether hatches left open by crew members played a part in the rapid sinking of the boat; Shocked schoolmates of missing Hannah Lynch are desperate for updates after she was confirmed to be among those missing; Investigators are set to fly out from Britain to Sicily to help Italian authorities examine how the £30million superyacht went down; The last photo from on board the doomed luxury yacht taken hours before the vessel sank is revealed; A bewildered former crew member on the yacht said it was 'strange' for the boat to sink after previously withstanding raging Atlantic seas; Questions have been raised over whether the superyacht's 246ft-high mast played a part in the dramatic capsizing; Survivors of the disaster are 'constantly asking about the missing people' as they recover in hospital; The wife of Mike Lynch is 'recovering from injuries in a wheelchair' while waiting for updates on her husband and daughter; Mr Lynch's co-defendant in a US fraud trial was hit by a car in a fatal collision in England just days earlier; A weather map shows how the luxury superyacht was buffeted by winds of up to 150mph before it sank.
Sailing expert Sam Jefferson, editor of magazine Sailing Today, also said that he believes open hatches and doors could have contributed to the rapid sinking of Mr Lynch's superyacht. He said: 'I would have said that the boat got hit very hard by the wind, it was pinned over on its side. 'I imagine all the doors were open because it was hot, so there were enough hatches and doors open that it filled with water very quickly and sank like that.
' Andrea Ratti, a nautical design professor at Milan Polytechnic University, said that a boat the size of the Bayesian would only sink so quickly by taking in a huge amount of water. He suggested that portholes, windows or other openings may have been left open, letting in water. Weather records show temperatures reached around 33C the day before the sinking, which may have led to the vessel's occupants wanting air to flow through while they slept.
Luca Mercalli, the president of the Italian Meteorological Society, said on Tuesday that the crew should have made sure that all the guests were awake and given them lifejackets in light of the forecasted heavy rains. Chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, and his team are expected to interview the 15 survivors soon to determine what led to the tragic sinking of the Bayesian yacht. Meanwhile a British team will also take part in the probe, with a former marine accident investigator saying they will look at whether the windows or watertight doors were open.
Gavin Pritchard, who was a principal investigator with the UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) before retiring in 2022, told The Telegraph: 'The MAIB will want to look at the vessel using either an ROV [remotely operated vehicle] or divers, or want to have a look and see what the positions of watertight doors, hatches and windows were. It'd be important to state that doesn't attribute blame,' he added, saying the job of the MAIB is to establish a cause for the sinking - rather than legal liability - so safety-critical findings can be spread across the maritime industry. He added: 'One of the first questions that accident investigators ask is, has anything like this ever happened before? And I have to say, having observed this tragic event, I honestly can't think of anything similar to this.
' It comes as school friends of missing Hannah are anxiously waiting for updates on her safe return, with her prestigious Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, west London , saying it is 'in shock' after its former pupil disappeared. A spokesperson for the £25,000-a-year school said: 'We are all incredibly shocked by the news that Hannah and her father are among those missing in this tragic incident and our thoughts are with their family and everyone involved as we await further updates.' Hannah had just completed her A-Levels and gained a place to study English at Oxford before the tragedy.
The Italian coastguard has insisted it is continuing its search, even though a positive outcome after nearly two days is 'difficult to imagine'. Frigate Captain Vincenzo Zagarola told Italian radio station RTL: 'Given the time that has passed and the circumstances of the event, it is naturally difficult to imagine that things can go well but we are not giving up, so we are busy [searching] with naval and air resources.' Nick Sloane, who worked on the Costa Concordia salvage operation, said divers are entering a 'critical' 24 hours to rescue anyone who might still be alive.
'They've got a very small window of time to try to find people stuck inside with hopefully an air pocket, and they could be rescued,' Mr Sloane told Sky News. 'You've got a maximum of two to three days to try to get someone out, so the next 24 hours are critical.' But when Mr Zagarola was asked about the likelihood of the missing passengers being alive, he said: 'Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be not.
' Divers from Napoli and Messina are assisting with the huge search operation, which is being made more difficult due to cables and furnishings obstructing the way to the cabins, Italian media reported. Dr Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a senior lecturer of mechanical, biomedical and design engineering at Aston University, said that divers 'may be looking for a banging noise at regular intervals'. 'This is common practice on submarines and was one of the signs the search mission for the Titan submarine was looking for after it went missing last year,' he said and added: 'But whether air pockets formed on the Bayesian is simply impossible to predict.
' After inspecting the command bridge, which is outdoors, the cave divers descended into the main lounge from an internal ladder. But inside, they were obstructed by floating objects from chairs and cushions to utensils and plates. Marco Tilotta, inspector of the Palermo Fire Department's diving unit, said: 'We checked the hull from the outside and now we have entered the vessel to inspect all the rooms.
'Access to the hull is difficult, getting inside, going down to the compartment below through the narrow stairs and going into all the cabins to analyse centimetre by centimetre is really hard and difficult work.' A helicopter was seen flying over Porticello this afternoon, while an underwater vehicle has been helping divers search for missing passengers. Italian rescue workers are using a remotely operated underwater vehicle in their search.
In a statement, the coastguard said five patrol cars, one helicopter and divers had been working since the early hours of Tuesday morning. Despite the sliver of hope, Italian Coastguard officials admitted they believe the six people who are still missing have died and their bodies are inside the wreck. It is believed the ship sank after its mast - one of tallest in the world at an enormous 246ft-high - snapped during the brutal incident and keeled over, taking the hull beyond the 'down-flooding angle', according to nautical experts.
Among the 15 who survived include a one-year-old British baby called Sofia, who was kept afloat by her mother, 36-year-old Charlotte Golunski. Mrs Golunski, an Oxford graduate and senior associate at Invoke, also survived after fighting to prevent her child from drowning. The mother told Italian newspaper Repubblica: '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.
' The head of Palermo Emergency Medical Services, Dr Fabio Genco, told the BBC that there had been 'apocalyptic' scenes in the aftermath of the sinking. He said: 'The word that the mother and all the injured kept repeating was the 'darkness' during the shipwreck. 'They spoke of about five minutes, from three to five minutes, from the moment the boat was lifted, raised by the waves of the sea until it sank.
'There were truly apocalyptic scenes where everyone was searching and hoping to find the people who at that moment were not present, just missing.' He added: 'Unfortunately in the face of death and the face of life there is no difference between rich and poor, between nobles and commoners.' Mrs Golunski's British husband James Emsilie, 36, also survived the tragedy.
Another survivor is Lynch's wife Angela Bacares, who is now reportedly recovering from her injuries in a wheelchair. She revealed that the first sign of the freak waterspout that sunk the luxury sailboat Bayesian was a 'slight tilt' that woke her up. Lynch's wife told La Repubblica that she and her husband woke up at 4am when the boat suddenly 'tilted'.
Mrs Bacares said that they were not worried at the time, but that she still got up to see what was happening, until glass shattered and created confusion on board. She sustained abrasions on her feet - likely after walking on glass shards during the sinking - which have left her unable to walk and sitting in a wheelchair, La Repubblica reports, while she also has bandages on others part of her body. Another survivor is Clifford Chance lawyer Ayla Ronald, 36, who was part of the successful legal team invited to go sailing with Lyncchah, according to her father Lin.
On-board hostess Leah Randall, 20, from South Africa, also survived the tragedy. Heidi Randall, Leah's mother, told Sky News: 'I'm beyond relieved that my daughter's life was spared by the grace of God. 'It doesn't make it any easier living with heartache of those who have lost their lives or missing.
' Leah was photographed leaving the coast guard headquarters yesterday alongside a fellow crew member. Leah and 22-year-old on-board hostess Katja Chicken, from Germany, said as they were questioned by investigators: 'We are alive by a miracle,' according to Italian news agency ANSA, who reported that one of the girls sobbed as she said: 'It was terrible.' Other survivors included Irish woman Sasha Murray, 29, Matthew Fletcher, 41, from London, James Catfield 51, from New Zealand, Myin Htun Kyaw, 39, from Myanmar, crew member Leo Eppel and Frenchman Matthew Griffith.
On Tuesday evening two crew members, Tus Koopmans and Eaton Parker, were also named as survivors. No age or nationalities were provided. Speaking from a hospital room in the town of Termini Imerese close to Palermo, Mr Catfied, in a state of grief and shock, could only utter one sentence.
'We didn't see it coming,' he told La Repubblica. Rescuers claimed that survivors spoke of the ship going down in 'two minutes' and that it appears that the yacht 'wasn't anchored in a safe place' at the time of sinking. They were rescued by crews from nearby boats including that of Karsten Borner, the captain of a sailing ship anchored near the Bayesian, who said his team struggled to keep their boat afloat when the tornado hit.
Fabio Cefalu, a fisherman in Porticello who witnessed the tragedy unfold, said he saw a waterspout – a sort of mini-tornado – that lasted about 12 minutes shortly before 4am. At around 4.10am he said he saw a red flare go off from Bayesian but by the time he was able to reach the area about 20 minutes later the yacht had all but disappeared.
'We found only the cushions, and a few planks floating in the water,' he said. Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Hit the follow button above for more of the news you need. Italy Share or comment on this article: Authorities investigate if the open hatches caused superyacht to sink e-mail.
