AN INVESTIGATION has been launched into whether hatches were left open on the Bayesian causing the doomed yacht to sink in minutes due to “human error”.
Hopes are fading fast as divers continue to search for the six missing people, including tech tycoon and yacht owner Mike Lynch.
It comes as horrifying CCTV shows the moment the yacht was engulfed by the storm.
And a diving salvage expert told The Sun it is unlikely those unaccounted for are still alive, even if air pockets formed inside the 183ft vessel.
The boat – which was anchored for the night off the coast of Palermo in Sicily, was caught in a storm, including a tornadic waterspout which snapped the mast, at around 4am on Monday.
The yacht was carrying 12 passengers and 10 crew, and sank within 60 seconds – with those unaccounted for feared dead.
Karsten Borner, the skipper of a boat that had been moored alongside it, said the yacht flipped on its side soon after the storm hit.
It comes as…
He added those on board had little time to get to safety.
Italian prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation into the disaster, reports The Telegraph.
They will seek to establish what caused the boat to sink and if any of the crew are criminally liable – or whether it was simply a freak weather event.
Meanwhile, the British government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said it sent four of its inspectors to Sicily to conduct a “preliminary assessment”.
One expert at the scene in Sicily told reporters an early focus would be on whether the access hatches into the vessel were closed before the tornado struck.
Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society, also said that, in light of the weather warnings, the crew should have woken the guests and given them life jackets.
Prosecutors will also examine whether measures such as the use of yacht’s retractable keel, which adds extra stability and acts as a counterweight to the large mast, were deployed.
Ambrogio Cartosio, the chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese, and his team are expected to begin interviewing the 12 survivors.
They will also gather evidence from emergency workers, divers, fire personnel and Coast Guard.
Sam Jefferson, editor of the magazine Sailing Today, 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.
“The reason it got pinned over so hard was because the mast is huge.”
It comes as emergency teams trying to access the Bayesian will have to make “a big choice” as the rescue efforts intensify, a maritime diving and wreckage expert said.
Bertrand Sciboz told BBC News: “I think 50 metres is a limit to dive with a certain category of professional divers, so you will need to dive with some kind of helmet and pipe and (be) connected to the surface for oxygen, and also for for speaking and hearing and telling what you see and and do.
“It’s always very difficult, and especially with a sailing vessel, because you’ve got rope everywhere, you’ve got a sail which is floating in the current, because we are in Mediterranean Sea and not in the English Channel.
“But the main thing, you know, it’s the fact that in those kind of conditions, it’s very hard to go inside the wreck, and they will have to have to make a big choice at one moment, of salvaging the whole wreck or rescuing the bodies.”
The yacht was carrying 12 passengers and 10 crew. It sank half a mile off the coast of the island’s capital Palermo.
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
THE BAYESIAN superyacht was hosting a lavish party for 12 guests, with 10 crew also onboard.
After 15 people were rescued from the water on Monday, six people remain missing and one has been found dead.
Italian authorities said the man recovered near the yacht wreckage was the chef working onboard.
Four of the missing are British and two are American.
Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, are among the four Brits lost at sea.
International chairman of bank giant Morgan Stanley, Brit Jonathan Bloomer, 70, is also missing along with his wife Judy.
As is top New York lawyer Chris Morvillo, a solicitor at major firm Clifford Chance who worked for Mike Lynch, and his wife Neda.
Footage and pictures from the scene showed hordes of firefighters, divers and police scouring the water all day Monday, overnight and again on Tuesday.
All six people missing are tragically believed to still be inside the wreck, the Italian Coast Guard has said.
Tech tycoon Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Charlotte are among those unaccounted for.
Top New York lawyer Chris Morvillo, a solicitor at major firm Clifford Chance who worked for Mr Lynch, and his wife Neda are also missing.
International chairman of bank giant Morgan Stanley, Brit Jonathan Bloomer, 70, along with his wife Judy, are also missing.
Clifford Chance lawyer Ayla Ronald, 36, and her partner were also among those rescued – as was Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, 57.
The latter suffered horrific injuries after walking across broken glass to safety.
Mr Lynch, previously dubbed “the British Bill Gates“, was hosting a party on the boat along with his wife and daughter.
The business tycoon – worth an estimated £852m – was surrounded by members of his legal firm and company Invoke Capital to celebrate a US jury clearing him of fraud earlier this summer.
He was extradited to the US in 2023 over the £8.5billion sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 and was accused of inflating the company’s value.
The dad-of-two had spent a year under house arrest in the States.
He was cleared of 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy, following a trial in San Francisco in June.
By Georgie English, Foreign News Reporter
ENTREPRENEUR Mike Lynch is still believed to be missing hours after a £14m luxury yacht capsized in a tornado off the coast of Sicily.
The tech tycoon, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, was one of the 22 people sailing onboard the £166,000 a week vessel, the Telegraph reported this afternoon.
Lynch, 59, sold Autonomy Corporation – a tech company for $11b to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
He has also been involved in Invoke Capital and cybersecurity company Darktrace.
He was awarded an OBE for his services to enterprise in 2006.
Born in Ilford, Lynch had a firefighter father from County Cork and a nurse mother from County Tipperary.
Away from work, Mike is married to wife Angela Bacares and the pair have two children together.
In 2023, the Sunday Times rich list set the couple’s value at £852m.
Just weeks ago, Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges by a jury in San Francisco after a 12-year legal battle over the $11bn sale of his firm, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
He was extradited to the US on fraud charges back in 2023 with a judge setting his bail at £79m.
US Marshsals took Lynch into custody at Heathrow, putting him in chains and bundling him on board a United Airlines flight.
However, he had a few things in his favour.
The nature of the case led to a boring and turgid trial, including painstaking parades of emails, reports and spreadsheets filled with jargon, leaving jurors glassy-eyed.
One was even dismissed because he repeatedly fell asleep.
Lynch argued that any questionable activity was entirely immaterial in the context of a thriving business bringing in hundreds of millions a year.
While his lawyers claimed the books were approved by outside accountants and that, by British standards, the deals in question were appropriately accounted for.
Lynch was used as the final witness and rather than going “right for the jugular”, as his head lawyer Brian Heberlig said, the prosecutors simply “reviewed a chronology of documents, with no probing questions”. The jury agreed.
