Superyacht sinking: Search continues, billionaire’s daughter still missing

UPDATE: The body of Hannah Lynch was pulled from the water on Friday, as manslaughter charges are being considered by Italian prosecutors.

ORIGINAL STORY: The Italian coast guard said Thursday the body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch is among those recovered off the coast of Sicily from the wreckage of a superyacht whose builders had called it unsinkable.

One woman, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, remains missing. The bodies of Lynch, who had been celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges with his family and the people who had defended him at trial in the United States, and five others were recovered by rescue crews following Monday’s tragedy.

Divers and rescue crews unloaded body bags from the rescue vessels that pulled into port at Porticello.

The Bayesian, a 56-metre British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday as it was moored about a kilometre offshore. Civil protection officials said they believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.

Fifteen people escaped in a lifeboat and were rescued by a nearby sailboat. One body was recovered Monday — that of the ship’s Antigua-born chef, Recaldo Thomas.

Investigators from the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office, meanwhile, were acquiring evidence for their criminal investigation, which they opened immediately after the tragedy even though no formal suspects have been publicly identified.

Questions abound about what caused the superyacht, which was built in 2008 by Italian shipyard Perini Navi, to sink so quickly, when the nearby Sir Robert Baden Powell sailboat was largely spared and managed to rescue the 15 survivors.

3:17 At least 1 dead, 6 missing after storm sinks luxury yacht off Sicily

The chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns the Bayesian’s manufacturer, said superyachts like these are “the safest in the most absolute sense.”

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“First of all, because they have very little surface compared to a yacht facing into the wind,” CEO Giovanni Costantino told Sky News on Wednesday. “Second, with the structure, the drift keel, they become unsinkable bodies.”

Divers have struggled to find the bodies in the yacht’s hull on the seabed 50 metres underwater.

“We would need a crystal ball to know when we’ll be able to find the next body,” said Luca Cari, spokesperson for the fire rescue service.

“It’s very difficult to move inside the wreckage. Moving just one meter can take up to 24 hours,” Cari said.

Was it merely the case of a freak waterspout that knocked the ship to its side and allowed water to pour in through open hatches? What was the position of the keel, which on a large sailboat such as the Bayesian might have been retractable, to allow it to enter shallower ports?

“There’s a lot of uncertainty as to whether it had a lifting keel and whether it might have been up,” said Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a fellow of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects and the editor of the Journal of Sailing Technology. “But if it had, then that would reduce the amount of stability that the vessel had, and therefore made it easier for it to roll over on its side,” he said in an interview.

Yachts such as the Bayesian are also required to have watertight, sub-compartments that are specifically designed to prevent a rapid, catastrophic sinking even when some parts fill with water.

“So for the vessel to sink, especially this fast, you are really looking at taking water on board very quickly, but also in a number of locations along the length of the vessel, which again indicates that it might have been rolled over on its side,” Souppez said.

Italian coast guard and fire rescue divers, meanwhile, continued the underwater search in dangerous and time-consuming conditions. Because of the depth of the wreck — which is far deeper than most recreational divers are certified for and at a depth that requires special precautions — divers working in tag teams can only spend about 12 minutes at a time searching.

The limited dive time is designed in part to avoid decompression sickness, also known as the “bends,” which can occur when divers stay underwater for long periods and ascend too quickly, allowing nitrogen gas dissolved in the blood to form bubbles.

“The longer you stay, the slower your ascent has to be,” said Simon Rogerson, the editor of SCUBA magazine. He said the tight turnaround time suggests the managers of the operation are trying to limit the risks and recovery time after each dive.

“It sounds like they’re operating essentially on no decompression or very tight decompression, or they’re being extremely conservative,” he said.

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Winfield reported from Rome and Kirka from London. Trisha Thomas contributed from Rome.