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Boats like Mike Lynch’s superyacht are “unsinkable”, according to the chief executive of the company that builds and sells the vessels.
Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, said there are no flaws with the design and construction of the Bayesian and it is “one of the safest boats in the world”.
The Bayesian, a 184-ft superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a freak tornado struck.
The Italian Sea Group owns Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini that built the vessel owned by British tech magnate Mike Lynch, who was confirmed dead on Thursday after his body had been recovered from the wreck of the boat.
Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still unaccounted for. The bodies of the other four people who vanished when the boat went down were recovered from the yacht on Wednesday.
“The ship sank because it took on water, from where investigators will have to say,” Mr Costantino told television news programme TG1 late on Wednesday.
Citing data from the yacht’s automatic tracking system and based on available footage, Mr Costantino said it took 16 minutes from when the wind began buffeting the yacht, and it began taking on water, for it to sink.
Mr Costantino said the Milan-listed group had suffered “enormous damage” to its reputation, with shares falling 2.5 per cent since the disaster.
The disaster has baffled naval marine experts who said such a high end vessel should have top-class fittings and safety features and should have been able to withstand such weather.
Besides Mr Lynch and his daughter, the other people who failed to escape from the boat were Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo.
Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch’s wife, managed to get to safety, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.
Specialist rescuers have been searching inside the hull of the sunken yacht for the past three days, but operations have been challenging due to the depth and the narrowness of the places that the divers are scouring, the fire brigade said.
Additional reporting by agencies
