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Lynch Yacht Sinking Off Sicily Proves as Baffling as It Is Tragic

As bodies were recovered, the authorities and experts wondered how a $40 million, stable and secure vessel could have sunk so quickly.

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By Emma Bubola and Michael J. de la Merced

Emma Bubola reported from Porticello, Italy, and Michael J. de la Merced from London.

Two months after being cleared in a bruising legal battle over fraud charges, the British tech mogul Mike Lynch celebrated his freedom with a cruise. He invited his family, friends and part of his legal team on board his luxury sailing yacht, a majestic 180-foot vessel named Bayesian after the mathematical theorem around which he had built his empire.

On Sunday night, after a tour of the Gulf of Naples, including Capri, and volcanic islands in the Eolian archipelago, the boat anchored half a mile off the Sicilian coast in Porticello, Italy. It chose a stretch of water favored by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago for its protection from the mistral wind and, in more recent times, by the yachts of tech billionaires. The boat was lit “like a Christmas tree,” local residents said, standing out against the full moon.

But about 4 a.m., calamity unfolded. A violent and fast storm hit the area with some of the strongest winds locals said they had ever felt. Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman, said he saw a flare pierce the darkness shortly after 4.

Minutes later, the yacht was underwater. Only dozens of cushions from the boat’s deck and a gigantic radar from its mast floated on the surface of the sea, fishermen said.

In all, 22 people were on board, 15 of whom were rescued. Six bodies — five passengers and the ship’s cook — had been recovered by Thursday afternoon, including that of Mr. Lynch, an Italian government official said, adding that the search was continuing for his daughter.

It was a tragic and mystifying turn of events for Mr. Lynch, 59, who had spent years seeking to clear his name and was finally inaugurating a new chapter in his life. Experts wondered how a $40 million yacht, so robust and stable could have been sunk by a storm near a port within minutes.

“It drives me insane,” said Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which in 2022 bought the company, Perini, that made the Bayesian. “Following all the proper procedures, that boat is unsinkable.”

The aura of misfortune only deepened when it emerged that Stephen Chamberlain, 52, a former vice president of finance for Mr. Lynch’s former company and a co-defendant in the fraud case, was killed two days earlier, when he was hit by a car while jogging near his house in England.

Since June, the two men had been in a jubilant mood. A jury in San Francisco had acquitted both on fraud charges that could have sent them to prison for two decades. There were hugs and tears, and they and their legal teams went for a celebratory dinner party at a restaurant in the city, said Gary S. Lincenberg, a lawyer for Mr. Chamberlain.

The sea excursion was meant as a thank-you by Mr. Lynch to those who had helped him in his legal travails. Among the guests was Christopher J. Morvillo, 59, a scion of a prominent New York family of lawyers who had represented Mr. Lynch for 12 years. He and his wife, Neda, 57, were among the missing.

So, too, was Jonathan Bloomer, 70, a veteran British insurance executive who chaired Morgan Stanley International and the insurer Hiscox.

The body of the ship’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered. All the other crew members survived. Among them was Leo Eppel, 19, of South Africa, who was on his first yacht voyage working as a deck steward, said a friend, who asked not to be identified.

Since the sinking, the recovery effort and investigation have turned the tiny port town of Porticello, a quiet enclave where older men sit bare-chested on balconies, into what feels like the set of a movie.

Helicopters have flown overhead. Ambulances have sped by with the sirens blaring. The Coast Guard has patrolled the waters off shore, within sight of a cordoned-off dock that had been turned into an emergency headquarters.

On Wednesday afternoon, a church bell tolled after the first body bag was loaded into an ambulance, a crowd watching in silence.

The survivors were sheltering in a sprawling resort near Porticello, with a view of the shipwreck spot, and had so far declined to comment.

Attilio Di Diodato, director of the Italian Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology, said that the yacht had most likely been hit by a fierce “down burst” — when air generated within a thunderstorm descends rapidly — or by a waterspout , similar to a tornado over water.

He added that his agency had put out rough-sea warnings the previous evening, alerting sailors about storms and strong winds. Locals said the winds “felt like an earthquake.”

Mr. Costantino, the boat executive, said the yacht had been specifically designed for having a tall mast — the second-tallest aluminum mast in the world. He said the Bayesian was an extremely safe and secure boat that could list even to 75 degrees without capsizing.

But he said that if some of the hatches on the side and in the stern, or some of the deck doors, had been open, the boat could have taken on water and sunk. Standard procedure in such storms, he said, is to switch on the engine, lift the anchor and turn the boat into the wind, lowering the keel for extra stability, closing doors and gathering the guests in the main hall inside the deck.

12 guests occupied the yacht’s six cabins. There were also 10 crew members.

Open hatches, doors and cabin windows could have let in water during a storm, according to the manufacturer.

Open hatches, doors and

cabin windows could

have let in water

during a storm,

according to the

manufacturer.

Source: Superyacht Times, YachtCharterFleet, MarineTraffic

By Veronica Penney

The New York Times attempted to reach the captain, James Cutfield, who had survived, for comment through social media, his brother and the management company of the yacht (which did not hire the crew), but did not make contact.

So far none of the surviving crew members have made a public statement about what happened that night.

Fabio Genco, the director of Palermo’s emergency services, who treated some of the survivors, said that the victims had recounted feeling as if the boat was being lifted, then suddenly dropped, with objects from the cabins falling on them.

The Italian Coast Guard said it had deployed a remotely operated vehicle that can prowl underwater for up to seven hours at a depth of more than 980 feet and record videos and images that they hoped would help them reconstruct the dynamics of the sinking. Such devices were used during the search and rescue operations of the Titan vessel that is believed to have imploded last summer near the wreckage of the Titanic.

After rescuers broke inside the yacht, they struggled to navigate the ropes and many pieces of furniture cluttering the vessel, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s national firefighter corps.

Finally, as of Thursday morning, they had managed to retrieve all but one of the missing bodies, and hopes of finding the missing person alive were thin. “Can a human being be underwater for two days?” Mr. Cari asked.

What was certain was that Mr. Lynch’s death was yet another cruel twist of fate for a man who had spent years seeking to clear his name.

He earned a fortune in technology and was nicknamed Britain’s Bill Gates. But for more than a decade, he had been treated as anything but a respected tech leader.

He was accused by Hewlett-Packard, the American technological pioneer that had bought his software company, Autonomy, for $11 billion, of misleading it about his company’s worth. (Hewlett-Packard wrote down the value of the transaction by about $8.8 billion, and critics called it one of the worst deals of all time .) He had been increasingly shunned by the British establishment that he sought to break into after growing up working-class outside London.

He was extradited to San Francisco to face criminal charges, and confined to house arrest and 24-hour surveillance on his dime. In a townhouse in the Pacific Heights neighborhood — with security people he jokingly told associates were his “roommates” — he spent his mornings talking with researchers whom he funded personally on new applications for artificial intelligence. Afterward, he devoted hours to discussing legal strategy with his team.

Despite his persistent claims of innocence, even those close to Mr. Lynch had believed his odds of victory were slim. Autonomy’s chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted in 2018 of similar fraud charges and spent five years in prison.

During Mr. Lynch’s house arrest, his brother and mother died. His wife, Angela Bacares, frequently flew over from England, and she became a constant presence in the San Francisco courtroom during the trial.

After he was finally acquitted, Mr. Lynch had his eye on the future. “I am looking forward to returning to the U.K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” he said.

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Pallanza, Italy.

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome. More about Emma Bubola

Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006. More about Michael J. de la Merced

The maker of Mike Lynch's yacht says it took 16 minutes to sink and the crew should have had time to rescue passengers

• Mike Lynch and six others are dead after his superyacht sank off Sicily's coast.
• The Bayesian sank during a storm. The Italian Sea Group CEO said the yacht took 16 minutes to sink.
• Giovanni Costantino told the Financial Times the ship was "designed to be absolutely stable."

The maker of Mike Lynch's doomed superyacht said the luxury sailing vessel was "absolutely stable" and never should have sunk as he blamed the crew for an "incredible mistake."

The 183-foot ship — named the Bayesian — sank during stormy weather near Palermo, Italy, in the early hours of Monday local time.

Fifteen people, including Lynch's wife , were rescued, while seven others — including Lynch, a UK tech tycoon — have been confirmed dead.

Divers discovered the body of the final person missing from the superyacht on Friday, the Italian coast guard said, according to reports. The Washington Post and CNN both reported that the last body found was believed to be Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Giovanni Costantino, the CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini Navi, the firm that built the Bayesian in 2008, said the ship was "designed to be absolutely stable" as it had the second-tallest mast in the world.

"The torture lasted 16 minutes. It went down, not in one minute as some scientists have said. It went down in 16 minutes," Costantino told the Financial Times . "You can see it from the charts, from the [Automatic Identification System] tracking chart."

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Business Insider could not independently verify his statement, and Costantino did not immediately return requests for comment.

Costantino added that the yacht's skipper "should have locked everything up, saying: "He should have gathered all passengers in the safe point. This is protocol. No one should have been in their cabin."

In an interview on Thursday with Reuters , Costantino placed the blame for the deadly tragedy on the yacht's crew members, saying that they made the "incredible mistake" of not being prepared for the powerful storm that rolled in.

"This is the mistake that cries out for vengeance," Costantino told Reuters, which reported that the storm was projected in shipping forecasts.

Maritime legal experts previously told BI that the operator of the sunken yacht should lawyer up in anticipation of claims from families of the dead or the survivors themselves.

"The boat suffered a series of indescribable, unreasonable errors; the impossible happened on that boat ... but it went down because it took on water. From where, the investigators will tell," Costantino told Reuters.

An investigation into the exact cause of the sinking is ongoing.

Authorities previously confirmed a strong storm had been in the area, though search-and-rescue experts have suggested that multiple factors could have contributed to the disaster.

One theory is that soaring temperatures in the area caused passengers and crew to leave windows and doors open, which would have allowed water to fill the ship quickly during the storm.

"The boat sank because it took on water," Costantino told the FT.

He added that a large opening just above the waterline on the stern could have been left open and become flooded.

Out of the 15 who escaped, nine were crew members. One of them, a chef named Recaldo Thomas, was confirmed dead Monday.

Stephen Askins, a lawyer specializing in maritime cases, told MailOnline that the crew was likely already awake before the ship sunk, while the passengers may have been sleeping below deck.

"The water came in from [hatchways] left open," Costantino told the FT. "There is no other possible explanation. If maneuvered properly, the boat would have comfortably handled the weather — comfortably."

Matthew Schanck, a maritime search-and-rescue consultant, previously told BI that the disaster was "shocking" because Lynch's vessel was a "modern, state-of-the-art superyacht" that would have been commercially certified with the appropriate safety regulations in place.

Witnesses told BBC News they saw a waterspout — an uncommon weather phenomenon consisting of tornadolike wind and water — before the ship went down.

"This tends to have been the accepted theory, that the vessel was hit by a waterspout and the crew didn't see it coming because it was nighttime and dark," Schanck said.

He added that this scenario made sense but questioned how witnesses would have noticed a waterspout if the crew hadn't seen it.

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