Tech tycoon Mike Lynch's superyacht the Bayesian was raised and taken to Termini Imerese, where Italian prosecutors investigating the sinking are based. Photo / Getty Images
The storm that struck the Bayesian superyacht off the coast of Sicily was not severe enough to have sunk it, Italian investigators believe.
Their preliminary conclusions suggest errors made by the crew contributed to the British-flagged yacht capsizing and sinking in August 2024 with the loss of seven lives.
The victims included British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah, 18.
The investigators believe the storm that hit the vessel on the night of August 19 2024, amounted to “little more than a squall, a sudden increase in wind speed that precedes thunderstorms and downpours”, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
“It was not only the fault of the storm,” concluded the team of experts, appointed by Italian prosecutors to scrutinise how the tragedy happened.
The sinking was not caused by “extreme weather conditions, impossible to predict and handle”.
The Dutch-flagged yacht, Sir Robert Baden Powell, weathered the storm and came to the rescue of the Bayesian’s survivors.
The controversial findings, which point to culpability by the crew, are sharply at odds with a preliminary report released a year ago by the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB).
It argued the superyacht sank because of a freak storm of almost tornado intensity, combined with the vessel’s design flaws, including its 237ft-high mast, one of the tallest in the world.
The British investigators said that once gale-force winds had pushed the yacht over to a certain angle, there was no hope for it.
“The investigation has established that … once Bayesian heeled over to an angle greater than 70.6 degrees, there was no chance of a return to an even keel,” the MAIB said in its report.
The MAIB report said the skipper and crew of the yacht could not have known of its design vulnerabilities. It described how the boat was struck by a meteorological phenomenon known as a downburst – a powerful downward column of wind and rain.
At the time, the sinking baffled maritime experts. They believed the 56m Bayesian, constructed by Italian yacht builder Perini and touted as “unsinkable”, should have been able to withstand the storm and should not have sunk as rapidly as it did.
A study by the UK’s Met Office of the weather conditions on the night of the tragedy “indicated the probable transient presence of hurricane-force winds well in excess of 64 knots at the time of the accident. These winds were sufficient to knock Bayesian beyond its angle of vanishing stability.”
The alleged weaknesses in the design of the yacht were not included in its stability information booklet, a form of operating manual for a captain, which sets out a vessel’s physical limits, the British investigators said.
They added: “Consequently, these vulnerabilities were also unknown to either the owner or the crew of Bayesian.”
The boat’s captain, New Zealander James Cutfield, and two British members of the crew – Tim Parker Eaton and Matthew Griffiths – are under investigation in Italy for manslaughter and causing a shipwreck.
Under the Italian legal system, this does not imply guilt and does not necessarily mean charges will be brought.
The crew have maintained they believe freak weather conditions, not their actions, caused the vessel to sink. Despite allegations of negligence, they say all the doors and hatches were closed in preparation for the storm.
Aside from Lynch and his daughter, the other victims were: Recaldo Thomas, the ship’s Antiguan-Canadian chef, Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy Bloomer, Chris Morvillo, a Clifford Chance lawyer, and his wife Neda Morvillo.
Fifteen people, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, were rescued.
The wreck of the Bayesian was raised from the seabed, just half a mile from the fishing town of Porticello, last June.
It was transported by a floating platform to the industrial port of Termini Imerese, about 25km along the coast.
The prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Angelo Cavallo, is due to inspect the wreck for himself this month.
Investigators hope to be able to submit their report on August 19 – the second anniversary of the tragedy.
Lynch founded a software company called Autonomy in 1996. Just a few weeks before the yacht’s sinking, he had been cleared of fraud charges over the £8.6 billion ($20b) sale of the firm to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
The Bayesian’s cruise around Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean was intended as a celebration of his acquittal.
Had he been convicted, he could have faced more than 20 years in jail. Lynch’s co-defendant in the fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being fatally struck by a car while jogging in Cambridgeshire two days before the Bayesian sank.
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