video of yacht crash

The 5 tragic minutes that sank a superyacht

PORTICELLO, Italy — Survivors of a storm that sank a superyacht off Sicily recounted their ordeal to one of the doctors who rushed to their aid, with some saying it took mere minutes for the 180-foot ship to go down. 

Dr. Fabio Genco, head of the Palermo Emergency Medical Services, told NBC News on the phone Thursday that he arrived in the seaside village of Porticello before dawn Monday, about an hour after the $40 million Bayesian sank in the violent and sudden storm.   

Of the 22 people onboard, 15 survived despite storm conditions and darkness, climbing onto a lifeboat before being rescued by a nearby sailboat. The crew members have made no public statements so far, though some have been interviewed by investigators.

“They told me that it was all dark, that the yacht hoisted itself up and then went down,” Genco said, recounting what the survivors told him. “All the objects were falling on them. That’s why I immediately made sure, by asking them questions, if they had any internal injuries,” he said. 

It appears they had just minutes to abandon the sinking ship, Genco said. 

“They told me that suddenly they found themselves catapulted into the water without even understanding how they had got there,” he said, “And that the whole thing seems to have lasted from 3 to 5 minutes.”

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini Navi, the Bayesian's shipbuilder, told Sky News that there were no flaws with the design or construction of the yacht. He said their structure and keel made boats like that “unsinkable bodies.”

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he disavowed responsibility, blaming instead the actions of the crew. “Mistakes were made,” he said. 

Genco said one of his colleagues who arrived at the scene before him initially thought that only three people survived, but the coast guard reported there were other survivors and more emergency services were called in. 

When Genco arrived, he found scenes of panic and despair. 

“Unfortunately, we are used to such panic scenes because we are used to the shipwrecks that happen on Lampedusa ,” Genco said, referring to the island southwest of Sicily, where the wreckage of boats carrying migrants on the sea journey from North Africa to Italy are often found . 

Six of the passengers were declared missing Monday, and by Thursday, the bodies of five had been recovered from the wreck , some 160 feet underwater.

Among those who survived is Angela Bacares, wife of the British tech mogul Mike Lynch , whose body was recovered Thursday. 

Another survivor has been identified as Charlotte Emsley, 35. She told the Italian news agency ANSA that she had momentarily lost hold of her year-old daughter, Sofia, in the water but managed to retrieve her and hold her over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were pulled into safety.

Dr. Domenico Cipolla at the Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in Palermo is also part of a team of medical professionals treating the shipwreck survivors. He told the BBC on Wednesday that Emsley and her daughter, as well as the father of the child, who Cipolla said also survived, are continuing to receive psychological help. 

“Psychological support was constant and is constant even today, because basically it is the wounds of the soul that are the most in need of healing in these cases,” Cipolla said.

Genco also told NBC News that he was especially concerned about the child. “She did not understand anything. She was soaking wet and cold,” he said. 

Karsten Borner, the Dutch captain of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, a yacht that was anchored near the Bayesian, said by phone Wednesday that he saw a thunderstorm come in at around 4 a.m. local time (10 p.m. ET) Monday, followed by what looked like a waterspout, a type of tornado that forms over water. 

The International Centre for Waterspout Research noted on X that there was a “waterspout outbreak” off Italy on Monday, the day the Bayesian sank. 

“I turned on the engine and made maneuvers so that we wouldn’t collide with the Bayesian, which was anchored about 100 meters from us,” Borner said. “Then all of a sudden it disappeared. Then the wind calmed down, we looked around and saw a red flare.”

Borner said he got into his boat’s tender and saw a life raft with 15 people on it. Members of the crew were administering first aid. 

“I don’t know why it sank so quickly, but it may have something to do with the mast which was incredibly long,” he said. Questions have been raised about whether the mast was to blame for the accident as tall masts, even with the sails down, have more surface area exposed to the wind, which can contribute to tipping a vessel in a storm.

The CCTV footage that emerged Tuesday showed the yacht’s 250-foot mast, believed to be one of the tallest aluminum sailing masts in the world, lashed by the storm as it appears to tilt to one side before disappearing.

Claudia Rizzo is an Italy based journalist.

Claudio Lavanga is Rome-based foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.

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Chilling footage shows bayesian superyacht slowly disappearing from view during raging storm.

Security camera footage from 650 feet from where the Bayesian superyacht sank Monday shows it slowly disappearing.

In the chilling video, the lights from the boat go out of view as the storm rages.

A witness told Giornale Di Sicilia that they rushed to watch the tape after learning about the ship.

What to know after a tornado sank the yacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily:

• A superyacht capsized off the coast of Sicily after a tornado hit the area early Monday, killing seven passengers.
• British tech tycoon Mike Lynch was identified as one of the bodies pulled from the wreckage. His teenage daughter, Hannah, was the final one to be recovered.
• Lynch — known as “Britain’s Bill Gates” — had invited guests from Clifford Chance, a legal firm that represented him, and Invoke Capital, his own company, on the voyage,  according to the Telegraph . 
• Security camera footage shot from 650 feet from where the  Bayesian sank Monday  shows it disappearing.
• A rare and unexpected “black swan” weather event may have led to the  Bayesian’s speedy demise , maritime experts say.

“Of about 20 cameras installed in the house, only one was not disturbed by the wind and rain. You can clearly see what is happening,” the witness said.

“There was nothing that could be done for the boat. It disappeared in a very short time.”

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Moment luxury yacht sinks off coast of Italy caught on camera, with 6 presumed dead

Grainy CCTV footage shows the moment a storm struck the Bayesian luxury yacht, which sank Aug. 19, 2024, off the coast of Italy. Six people are missing, officials say. (Giornale di Sicilia)

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CCTV shows Bayesian superyacht engulfed in storm moments before it sank

The CCTV footage shows the moment believed to be just before the sinking of a British-flagged yacht off of Sicily on Monday. One person died in the tragedy, while six are still missing.

By Claire Gilbody Dickerson, news reporter

Wednesday 21 August 2024 10:41, UK

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CCTV footage showing the moment just before a British superyacht sank has emerged.

The footage was recorded by a camera close to where the luxury vessel sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday morning.

A witness said they saw the vessel go down in 60 seconds, with the Italian news agency ANSA quoting them as saying: "You can clearly see what is happening. There was nothing that could be done for the vessel. It disappeared in a very short time."

Superyacht sinks: Follow latest

The body of the vessel's Canadian-Antiguan chef, Recaldo Thomas, has been found, the Italian Coastguard says.

Six people are still missing, including the yacht's owner, British tech tycoon, Mike Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah. Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, is among the 15 people who were rescued.

Read more: Mother 'beyond relieved' daughter escaped 10 minutes to search after divers open hole Co-defendant killed in car crash

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The search also continues for Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at major firm Clifford Chance, and both of their wives - Judy Bloomer and Neda Morvillo.

A huge search operation is ongoing, with multiple parties involved, including the coastguard and the fire service, while cave divers and helicopters have also been called in.

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Nick Sloane, an engineer who led the salvage operation for the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2013, said earlier today rescue divers looking for survivors have entered a "critical" 24 hours - with some possibly trapped in air pockets inside the ship - but he added that time is running out to save them if that is the case.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Souppez, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at Aston University, has said the speed at which the vessel sank (a few minutes, according to accounts) and the fact that it remains intact "could favour the formation of small air pockets inside".

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The 16 minutes that plunged the Bayesian yacht into a deadly spiral

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting out on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since the age of 10, saw the first flashes of lightning. "I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home," he told me.

"As the storm grew, everyone woke. Water was coming into my friend’s house."

At about 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had been due to go out that wild Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a flare go up.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – and discovered only cushions and floating planks of wood.

A luxury super yacht called the Bayesian, moored only a few hundred metres away, had already sunk.

It all happened in a 16-minute window of disaster , chaos and torment, which catapulted a sleepy Sicilian fishing port to the centre of world news.

All but seven of the 22 people on board the Bayesian - 12 passengers and 10 crew - had scrambled into a life raft as the yacht began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She told of clutching her baby in the air with all her strength to keep her from drowning. "It was all black around me," she said, "and the only thing I could hear were the screams of others."

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by a nearby sailing boat captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s top tech entrepreneurs, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Luxury turned to terror

Mr Lynch had brought together family, friends and colleagues for an idyllic holiday on his luxury boat: a sumptuous 56-metre (184ft) sailing yacht that won design awards and had the world’s tallest aluminium mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on charges that he had fraudulently inflated the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a celebration of freedom to mark his rehabilitation in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht went down, his body was retrieved by divers from the wreckage.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to begin studying at the University of Oxford next month, was recovered.

Among the others who died were the president of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family has released a statement talking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding they are “devastated and in shock”.

How the super yacht sank so quickly while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm undamaged has dumbfounded experts.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into potential crimes of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the probe was at a very early stage and nobody specific was being investigated, there were “many possibilities for culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew… we are absolutely not ruling anything out”.

A small team of British marine investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said that they now believed a downburst was the weather phenomenon that hit the ship: a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads unpredictably.

That contradicted previous reports that had identified the cause as a waterspout , or mini tornado at sea.

Either way, it’s clear extreme weather played a major role.

The crucial 16-minute window

Much of the focus for the investigation team is of course on the conduct of the captain, 51-year-old James Cutfield from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, alluding to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: plenty of others did. Violent winds and rain were forecast, following days of searing heat. The head of the company that built the Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he was convinced there had been a litany of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, a hatch must have been left open,” he said, “but also perhaps a side entrance for water to have poured inside.

"Before the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, pointed into the wind and lowered the keel."

A keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from its base.

"That would have stabilised the vessel, they would have been able to traverse the storm and continue their cruise in comfort," he said.

Rescuers instead found the wreckage of the Bayesian 50 metres underwater with its almost 10-metre-long keel raised .

Had it been deployed, it could have helped counter the wind buffeting the Bayesian’s 75-metre high aluminium mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told the newspaper La Repubblica that gusts of 100 kilometres an hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Mr Costantino said. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If water hadn’t surged in, it was unsinkable.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the power going out on the ship at 03:56 – showing that water was flooding areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the moment it sank.

That period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the extreme weather, will be pored over by investigators, particularly once they locate the vessel’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship surveyors, similarly believes that errors may have made the yacht vulnerable to the extreme weather.

“There should have been two members of the crew taking turns to be on watch overnight, given the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out on his boat – around a third of the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been moored in the harbour, not out at sea.”

Prosecutors say they believe one person was on watch in the cockpit that night.

From Casilli's sailing boat, we gained rare access to the spot where the Bayesian went down.

Around us, an Italian police vessel circulated, warning us back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among divers, as other rescue vessels arrived.

We didn’t know at the time – but they had just located more bodies.

It was an intensely challenging operation for the teams to recover those trapped in the wreckage. Given its depth, at 50 metres underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing for their safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote control vehicles that could operate on the seabed for far longer.

In this weekend’s press conference, rescuers said the passengers trapped inside during the sinking took refuge in cabins on the ship’s left side, where the last air bubbles formed.

Five of the bodies were found in the first cabin on the left, they said, while the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left side.

Access for the emergency teams was extremely difficult since the yacht remained largely intact with its furniture obstructing entry.

The coastguard compared it to an “18-storey building full of water”. When Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore emergency workers on the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven of the dead have been transported to a mortuary for post-mortems.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which would undoubtedly offer vital clues as to what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost 15 million euros (£12.7m) by some estimates.

The hunt for clarity

While the divers’ painstaking work to recover the dead has ended, the investigators’ painful hunt for answers has only begun.

They and the survivors are hunkered down in a hotel close to Porticello, which is strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards promptly asked us to leave.

Solving the enigma of what happened to the Bayesian will be crucial not only to help loved ones of the victims reach some sort of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

The brother of James Cutfield, the captain, said he was a “well-respected” sailor who had worked on boats his whole life. Did the experienced sailor somehow make a series of catastrophic errors? The trade union Nautilus, which represents seafarers and captains, called for restraint in passing judgement on the Bayesian’s crew.

"Any attempt to question their conduct without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy," it said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is gradually returning to the tranquillity of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats roam among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat out at the few seaside restaurants.

But what has happened over the past week has stunned and scarred many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We’ve never seen something like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”

Tributes to 'brilliant' Mike and Hannah Lynch as family speak of shock

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