As the search for tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his party of guests entered its second day hopes of finding alive those still missing appeared to be fading.
Divers reported from below the waters of the Mediterranean that the search was not only perilous but had so far made little progress.
Six people, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, were still missing after the £30 million ($63.5m) yacht sank after being hit by a tornado half a mile off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning.
Although the yacht, which is lying on its starboard side at a depth of around 50m off the coast of Porticello, is still intact, divers had been unable to gain access because of floating debris inside the vessel.
Marco Tilotta, a firefighter diver from Palermo, was one of the first divers to reach the Bayesian and claimed the yacht’s 237ft aluminium mast was still intact.
“It has no gashes, no signs of impact,” he said.
Divers have been going “centimetre by centimetre” to try and access the inside of the vessel, he added, but with the hull tilted 90 degrees, “access is difficult”.
“If you can get into the hull, you can see that there is a world of objects inside,” he said.
“It is difficult to get in inside, to get down the narrow stairs, and to go into all the cabins and analyse [everything] centimetre per centimetre.
“We will not stop. We have both the resources, the men and the equipment,” he added. “Our goal is to find all the people who missed the alarm.”
However, he dismissed reports that those people were visible from the outside. “From the porthole, we managed to only see condensation, debris, bottles,” he said.
He is among 22 divers aiding the search, of whom 11 are experts in traversing underwater caves. They are being assisted by a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), which can operate on the seabed for more than two hours.
Under Italian law, Tilotta said the firefighter divers can dive down to 50m but can only enter a vessel as long as the exit is visible. If not, then it’s up to the specialised cave divers who have particular equipment to continue the search.
Tilotta and his colleagues had waited for the cave divers to arrive late on Monday in the hope they could get into the corridors and cabins where the missing are believed to have been trapped.
“We are also carrying out searches along the coast with helicopters and jet skies in the water,” he added.
“However, since everything happened at night and the whirlwind was so sudden we are assuming that several people were inside.”
He likened the search to the Costa Concordia cruise ship which ran aground in January 2012 off the Italian island of Giglio, claiming the lives of 32 crew and passengers.
At the time divers had to navigate inverted corridors, leaking fuel and floating debris and furnishings in their search for the victims.
“It looked like a scenario similar to the Costa Concordia on a smaller scale,” he said. “Unfortunately, these are very complicated searches.”
By Tuesday afternoon it appeared that from the outside divers were able to see very little inside the yacht and had so far only been able to inspect the Bayesian’s bridge deck.
Firefighter spokesman Luca Cari said divers had entered the yacht’s salon using a ladder and were trying to find the best way to advance safely.
“We located a glass window through which we could enter. But it is closed from the inside and three centimetres thick, so we have to be able to remove it so we can advance further inside,” he said.
The rescue crews are also mindful of the possibility some of the passengers may have been thrown off the boat – though the speed with which the Bayesian went down makes that a remote possibility.
There had earlier been a glimmer of hope for Lynch’s family and friends.
Photographs issued on Tuesday morning by Italy’s Vigili del Fuoco Sommozzatori, the fire brigade’s underwater rescue division, showed their experts poring over the design plans of the Bayesian.
Observers said this suggested that the rescuers believed passengers could still be alive in air pockets inside the sunken 50m yacht.
Nick Sloane, who worked on the operation to salvage the Costa Concordia, said the divers were entering a “critical” 24 hours to rescue anybody who might have survived.
“They’ve got a very small window of time to try to find people stuck inside with hopefully an air pocket, and they could be rescued,” he said.
“You’ve got a maximum of two to three days to try to get someone out, so the next 24 hours are critical.”
He told Sky News: “If the yacht is on its side, it might have more air pockets than if it’s upright. She’s got quite a large keel, and that will deflect and put her on her side, I’m sure.”
The difficulty, of course, lies in divers managing to locate and then reach these air pockets – even if those trapped beneath the upturned hull had somehow managed to make their way to them.
Added to the complication is the short window of search time per descent. Divers are operating on 12 minutes of air in their chambers, with two minutes of that used to descend to the wreckage and back to the surface.
“They can stay underwater for a maximum of 12 minutes, two of which are needed to go up and down,” emergency responder Luca Cari told Italian daily Giornale Di Sicilia. “So the real-time to be able to carry out the search is 10 minutes per dive.”
Owing to this limited time underwater, the divers first have to locate and identify a body and secure it before returning to the surface. A second team then steps in to recover the body, Tilotta said.
Despite the perilous nature of the task at hand, the Italian divers have pledged to carry out a meticulous search of the British-flagged vessel, built in 2008 by Italian shipyard Perini Navi with Ron Holland Design.
Photographs and video released throughout the day showed the intensity of the operation, with divers backed by marine rescue helicopters and Italian coast guard vessels.
Back on dry land the ordeal of the survivors is only now becoming apparent, with three of them discharged from a hospital in Palermo on Tuesday afternoon.
Charlotte Golunski, her husband, James Emsley, and their baby daughter, Sofia, left the Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in a black van via a back entrance, accompanied by an officer from the British embassy.
Dr Domenico Cipolla, director of the emergency department at the hospital, said Golunski had told him something of what they had endured as the yacht went down.
Speaking to RAI news he said: “The mother said while she was sleeping with her daughter, they found themselves in the water in just a few moments.
“She held the little girl tightly. The light was gone. For a few seconds, the little girl slipped from her hands and she held her with her arms in the air. Within seconds they reached the yacht’s life raft.”
He told the broadcaster the couple had repeatedly said: “We don’t know how we are here alive, we are survivors.”
Cipolla added: “The parents alternate between moments when they are confident and others when they are sad for the fate of their missing travelling companions.”
As the search continued there was also some criticism of the Bayesian’s crew.
Luca Mercalli, one of Italy’s leading climate experts and president of the Italian Meteorological Society, said the crew should have paid more attention to weather warnings and prepared passengers accordingly by waking them and distributing life jackets as the storm hit.
Prof Mercalli said that although the waterspout, which hit the vessel, was not predictable, the crew should have been more vigilant. Italian authorities had issued a “yellow” and then a moderate weather alert.
He told The Telegraph: “I don’t know if there was anyone on board consulting the radar.
“Let’s say that if I had been on board, at the first sign of a thunderstorm I would have woken up all the occupants and been ready and alert with life jackets on until the storm was over.”
Prof Mercalli said the weather radar made it possible to estimate an intense thunderstorm within 15 to 30 minutes, even though it is impossible to know if the wind intensity will reach dangerous levels.
The Italian marine rescue agencies are adept at such missions, given that their waters form the route taken by thousands of migrants fleeing sailing from North Africa to Europe in flimsy vessels.
Hundreds have died in recent years, but many have also been saved by the country’s coast guard.
But with each passing hour, the prospect of finding Lynch and those still missing grows ever more remote.
Asked if there was any hope of finding the missing alive, Vincenzo Zagarola, spokesman for the Italian coast guard, said: “Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be no.”
Residential areas in both countries have suffered from deadly strikes in the conflict.