This is how the yacht on which billionaire Mike Lynch was sailing sank

Five dead and one missing. This is the latest tally following the sinking of the Bayesian, the yacht on which millionaire Mike Lynch, better known as the ‘British Bill Gates’, was spending his summers, and which was anchored off the coast of Palermo on the 19th when a waterspout hit it during the night. The ship was carrying 22 people, 10 crew and 12 passengers, including the technology magnate Mike Lynch, his wife, Angela Bacares (the only one rescued alive), and their daughter Hanna; the president of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife, Judy; and Chris Morvillo, Lynch’s American lawyer, with his wife, Neda.

Authorities are continuing their rescue efforts while experts are trying to explain what happened that fateful night. According to the satellite tracking app Vesselfinder, the boat left the port of Sicily on August 14 and was last recorded east of Palermo on Sunday afternoon, with the status of “anchored”. The yacht was hit by a tornado over the water, known as a ‘waterspout’, which turned it onto its side. “The wind was very strong: it was not normal, not a whirlwind, not a tornado,” says Giuseppe Cefalù, a fisherman from Porticello who was among the first to provide assistance after the shipwreck. “We have never seen anything like this here,” he adds.

Two circumstances led to the tragedy: first, the doors and hatches of the boat were open due to the high temperatures, so water quickly entered the interior of the ship once it capsized. Second, the 76-metre mast, the second highest in the world, acted as a sail. “What I think is that the ship was hit very hard by the wind, which made it turn to the side.”explained Sam Jefferson, editor of the sailing magazine Sailing Today: “I imagine that all the doors were open because it was hot, so there were enough open spaces that allowed the boat to fill with water very quickly. The mast pushed the boat hard to one side. It acted almost like a sail. The yacht would have filled with water before it could return to its normal position.”.

On the other hand, Andrea Ratti, a professor at the Polytechnic of Milan where he directs a master’s degree in yacht design for nautical architects and engineers, points out: “The mast is intact. From a theoretical point of view, it is very difficult for it to break, even at a size like that, but it is also true that the Bayesian suddenly found itself in a whirlpool and under upward and downward forces that upset all the balances, even for a boat as well made as this one and designed by a highly experienced professional like Ron Holland,” he said. “A ship like that doesn’t sink so quickly without a leak. Maybe broken windows, maybe open doors… A significant amount of water could have come in.”he assures.

Salvatore Cocina, director general of Civil Protection of the Region of Sicily, assures that “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time”while Rosario Marretta, professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics at the University of Palermo, points out that “One has to wonder why, with the weather forecast deteriorating sharply, the ship was at an unsafe distance from the coast in the middle of the night.”