Divers returned to the sea off Sicily on Friday in search of the teenage daughter of British tycoon Mike Lynch, the last person missing after his family’s luxury yacht sank, killing the businessman and five others.
Italy’s fire service said diving resumed in the early hours of the morning, continuing days of complex operations to recover bodies after the superyacht sank during a sudden storm before dawn on Monday.
“Long and delicate search operations for the last missing person continue,” the agency said on social media on Friday.
Lynch, a renowned tech entrepreneur and investor, had invited friends and family aboard the Bayesian yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a massive US fraud case.
But as the 56m (185ft) British-flagged vessel was moored off Porticello, near Palermo, it was hit by a surge of water — similar to a mini-tornado.
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It sank within minutes.
‘Heartbroken’
Fifteen people were rescued, but a body, believed to be that of the yacht’s chef, was found hours later.
Six people, including Lynch and his daughter Hannah, are missing.
The 18-year-old had just finished her school exams and had a place to study English literature at Oxford University, according to British media reports.
Friends of the teenager said she was kind and intelligent, as well as a staunch feminist, according to The Times newspaper.
Italian authorities launched a major search operation involving specialist divers, boats from various emergency services and helicopters.
The bodies of Lynch’s lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy were recovered Wednesday.
Lynch’s body was recovered a day later.
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Movillo’s firm Clifford Chance paid tribute to the lawyer and his wife, saying they were all “devastated at the tragic death… and are still coming to terms with this terrible loss”.
The Bloomer family described their “unimaginable grief”, saying Jonathan and Judy had been together for five decades.
“Our only consolation is that they are still together now,” the family said.
Many questions remain as to why the yacht sank, and so quickly, when other vessels nearby were unaffected.
On Thursday, the head of the company that built the boat said the tragedy could have been avoided.
“What has been done reveals a very large sum of errors,” said Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian marine group, which includes the Perini Navi company that built the Bayesian in 2008.
Bad weather forecast
He told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that bad weather was forecast and all passengers should have gathered at a pre-arranged assembly point, with all doors and hatches closed.
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“Instead, he took water with the guests still in the cabin. They ended up in a trap, those poor people ended up like mice in a trap,” he said.
Lynch, 59, was acquitted of all charges in a San Francisco court in June after being accused of an $11 billion fraud related to the sale of his Autonomy software company to Hewlett-Packard.
His family-owned Bayesian had a 75m mast, the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to the Charter World website.
Pumping it out would likely cost about 15 million euros and take “six to eight weeks,” according to the salvage engineer who led the recovery operation of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off Italy in 2012.
To recover the yacht, the mast could be removed at the bottom of the sea, but the vessel will be raised in its entirety using a giant crane and a team of 40 specialist divers, South African Nick Sloan told the Repubblica daily.
Source: AFP