THE CEO of the firm which produced the Bayesian superyacht has said it is an “unsinkable” boat after it plunged to the bottom of the sea on Monday killing at least six people.
Giovanni Costantino, boss at The Italian Sea Group, said boats built by his firms are “safest in the most absolute sense”.
Speaking to Sky News, he said there are no flaws or mistakes in the design of the Bayesian which was toppled in a storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday and sank within minutes.
And in a separate interview with Italian TV he blamed “human error” for the yacht’s wreck.
Five bodies belonging to the six missing passengers have been recovered so far, with the yacht chef was found dead on Monday, as divers search today for the final person.
The Italian Sea Group owns the firm that built the Bayesian, Perini Navi, with Costantino saying: “Being the manufacturer of Perini [boats], I know very well how the boats have always been designed and built.
“And as Perini is a sailing ship… sailing ships are renowned to be the safest ever.”
He said the boats’ structure and keel – a fin-like backbone underneath the boat which helps keep it balanced – make them “unsinkable bodies”.
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.
He told Italian TV: “The ship sank because it took on water. From where, the investigators will say.”
“The dynamic of the sinking is seen and read from AIS (Automatic Identification System) data and lasted sixteen minutes.”
He suggested the boat had been taking on water and “all it took was another guest” to turn her over.
“She then straightened very briefly before going down,” he said.
Divers set out from Porticello Harbour this morning for day four of the rescue efforts to recover the fifth and six passengers.
Pictures showed them taking the fifth body inland at around 8.45am local time after they were located on the wreck last night before efforts for the day were called off.
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It is believed the final body awaiting to be recovered in Mr Lynch’s teenage daughter Hannah.
Italian officials had yesterday said the first two bodies found were the father and daughter.
The first two were found trapped behind a mattress inside one of the cabins in the hull, local media reported.
Italian authorities have yet to officially confirm the identities of any of the bodies.
Rescuers spent days scouring the almost perfectly intact sunken boat, lying some 160ft underwater on the seabed, with little success.
Because of floating debris, narrow entrances and a 10-minute time limit per dive, rescuers struggled to reach the cabins where they believed the six people were trapped.
Officials held out hope there was a chance for rescue if those trapped in the yacht were surviving inside air pockets.
After sending down an underwater drone on Wednesday and using a hydraulic jack to prize open sliding glass doors in the lounge – they finally reached the suites.
They recovered four bodies, with two feared to be Brit billionaire tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, Sicily’s civil protection chief Salvo Cocina told The Telegraph.
Cocina said on Wednesday: “On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and express our condolences to them at this difficult time.”
FORMER billionaire entrepreneur Mike Lynch is feared dead after a £14m luxury yacht capsized in a tornado off the coast of Sicily Monday morning.
The tech tycoon, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, was one of the 22 people sailing onboard the £166,000 a week vessel.
Lynch, 59, was a serial entrepreneur having founded and sold tech and software companies with one of his biggest being Autonomy Corporation.
He was also been involved in Invoke Capital and cybersecurity company Darktrace.
As well as being 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 was happily married to wife Angela Bacares and the pair had two children together.
Angela is among those who have been rescued on the superyacht.
In 2023, the Sunday Times rich list set the couple’s value at £852m.
But Mike was extradited to the US on fraud charges back in 2023 with a judge setting his bail at £79m.
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.
The doomed yacht, named Bayesian, is also said to be owned by the Lynch family.
The ultra-luxurious yacht plunged beneath waves in the early hours of Monday after being hammered by a rare “Black Swan” waterspout – a freak twister-like event.
Witnesses said the 246ft tall mast was hit by a tornado, toppling the boat and causing it to capsize before it sank to the seabed in just minutes.
Fifteen of the 22 people onboard were rescued when a smaller nearby boat saw them in distress, helping 11 people clinging to a life raft onboard.
Lynch’s wife – Angela Bacares, 57 – was one of those who managed to escape in the tiny inflatable raft as the vessel capsized.
Italian officials have launched an investigation, as have the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch, into how the superyacht sank.
Four Brit specialists have been deployed to the site in Palermo to investigate.
Maritime experts agreed the yacht may have been sunk by a freak “Black Swan” waterspout which would have appeared without warning.
Captain of the doomed yacht James Cutfield, 51, was grilled by cops for over two hours after divers discovered the boat’s keel was raised – a structural backbone of the boat which could have affected its stability during the storm.
