After a difficult multiday search, Italian rescue divers have found four more bodies inside the wreck of the sailing yacht Bayesian off Sicily, including one "heavily-built man." British outlet The Telegraph reports that tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter - both missing since Monday's sinking - are among the deceased. The discoveries raise the number of identified victims to five, including chef Recaldo Thomas, whose remains were recovered on the day of the casualty. One person remains missing.
Bayesian went down in a sudden and extreme thunderstorm at about 0400-0500 on Monday morning. Local residents reported seeing a waterspout in the ordinarily-calm harbor, then a flare set off by Bayesian's crew.
According to local media, the dive teams managed to reach the sunken vessel's common areas on Tuesday, but the tight passageways limited their ability to get to the passengers' quarters. The vessel is lying on the bottom in 160 feet of water, resting on one side at 90 degrees. At that depth, each diver has just 10 minutes to work before they have to return to the surface in order to avoid decompression sickness.
The cause of the casualty is still under investigation, but one area of scrutiny will be the retractable bulb keel, which could be raised by nearly 20 feet in order to reduce the yacht's draft and enable access to smaller ports. If the keel had been in the raised position on Monday, the yacht would have responded differently to an extreme heeling moment - like the high winds of a waterspout engaging with the rigging. It is not yet known if the keel was raised or lowered at the time of the casualty.
From bystander accounts, it appears that the Bayesian sank in as little as 60-120 seconds, an extremely rapid timetable for a 180-foot luxury sailing yacht. Karsten Borner, the skipper of the good Samaritan vessel that rescued the 15 survivors, said that he and his crew were holding station nearby and noticed that the Bayesian was suddenly gone.
"We couldn't see them anymore and they disappeared from the radar, we were busy keeping our own ship sailing. We couldn't see the ship again so we were aware something was very wrong," he told Sky News. In a separate interview with Reuters, he added that "they went flat with the mast on the water and that they sank in two minutes."
Source: The Maritime Executive
