A black box recovered from the Bayesian superyacht breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful 16-minute timeline – after divers recovered the body of British teen Hannah Lynch
The poignant final 16 minutes onboard the tragic Bayesian yacht have been revealed as the boat’s black-box data has been analysed by police probing the disaster.
The information recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful 16-minute timeline. It comes as divers recovered the body of the final missing passenger from the wreck – Brit teen Hannah Lynch – daughter of tycoon Mike Lynch, who was retrieved on Thursday.
An AIS tracking system sends information from onboard boats to coastal stations, alerting officials to movement and distress. As part of a probe into just how the luxury 184ft yacht toppled and plunged to the bottom of the sea, killing at least six people, cops are analysing the data. It shows that at 3.50am on Monday the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere reports.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”. After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room. At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Survivors and witnesses from a small nearby boat – along with official reports – initially helped piece together an account of how the disaster unfolded on Monday morning.
People reported seeing a “tornado” – later clarified as a swirling cloud of air known as a waterspout – hit the 246ft tall mast. Officials have confirmed that this is what toppled the boat, causing it to capsize and take on water before it sank to the bottom of the sea.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily. The new data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am. Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
More details about the disaster surfaced yesterday as emergency workers revealed how the passengers tried to flee the water as it gushed onboard.
Divers said the guests pulled from the wreckage fled their cabins on the right – or starboard – side of the boat and tried to “climb” to safety by heading for the left – port side – where they were found.
A source working in the investigation told Italian outlet Corriere: “We found them all on that side. We had maps with the layout of the cabins and the positions of the guests, and that’s not where we recovered them.”