The CEO of the company that built the $40 million yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily this week has blamed the crew for the tragedy — saying they had 16 minutes and could have easily saved the seven who died.
“The boat suffered a series of indescribable, unreasonable errors,” Giovanni Costantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, told Reuters of the Bayesian sinking Monday, killing seven of the 22 onboard.
“The impossible happened on that boat … but it went down because it took on water. From where, the investigators will tell,” he said.
Blaming the crew for the “incredible mistake” of not being prepared for the storm, he said: “This is the mistake that cries out for vengeance.”
Costantino, whose company includes Perini Navi, the Italian high-end yacht maker that built the 183-foot superyacht in 2008, staunchly defended its construction — saying it had survived far more extreme storms during 22 years of trouble-free navigation.
Instead, he expressed horror that the crew was unable to save the seven who died — including the Bayesian’s owner, British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
He said the crew had a 16-minute window before the craft sank — plenty of time to get everyone to safety.
“The torture lasted 16 minutes,” he told the Financial Times.
“It went down, not in one minute as some scientists have said. It went down in 16 minutes. You can see it from the charts, from the AIS [Automatic Identification System] tracking chart,” he said.
Additionally, doors and hatches should have been closed, and the keel should have been lowered to increase stability, among other safety measures, Costantino said.
Had correct procedures been followed, all passengers would have gone back to sleep after one hour, “and the next morning they would have happily resumed their wonderful cruise,” he added.
“The captain should have prepared the boat and put it in a state of alert and of safety.”
“Ask yourself — why were none of the Porticello fishermen out that night? A fisherman checks the conditions and a ship doesn’t? The disturbance was completely readable on all the weather maps. It was impossible not to know,” he said.
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.
Bayesian had 22 people on board — 12 passengers and 10 crew — when it capsized and sank during a storm while anchored off the coast of northern Sicily.
Of those on board, 15 people — including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares — were rescued after escaping onto a lifeboat.
Rescue divers located Lynch’s teen daughter Friday, the final missing person, the Italian coast guard said.
The bodies of the other dead passengers, including Lynch and New York attorney Christopher Morvillo, were recovered Wednesday and Thursday from inside the hull of the sunken yacht. Those on board were there to help Lynch celebrate his recent acquittal in a major US fraud trial.
Meanwhile, Italian authorities launched a manslaughter investigation into what downed the $40 million yacht after it was struck by an intense storm early Monday, local media reported.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Termini Imerese had started making inquiries and was looking at a slew of offenses — including “shipwreck and multiple counts of culpable homicide against an unknown person,” sources told Palermo Today.
With Post wires
