Sinking of Mike Lynch's yacht in Sicily: storm, breakdown, final alert… we know more about the 16 minutes of chaos when everything changed

On the night of August 18-19, 2024, the luxury sailboat “Bayesian” sank in the waters off Sicily. Several people lost their lives in this shipwreck, we know more about the minutes before the tragedy.

A seventh body was found this Friday aboard the wreck of the sailing ship “Bayesian” which sank last weekend in the waters off Sicily. While the survivors are still in shock, we know more about the few minutes before the disaster, reports the Italian media Corriere.

The unfolding

On the night of Sunday to Monday, the luxury yacht belonging to the “British Bill Gates”, Mike Lynch, sank. The builder of the boat (built in 2008), Italian Sea, Group, was able to collect a certain amount of data in order to retrace the last moments of the boat before it sank to the bottom of the water.

It all happened in just over a quarter of an hour, 16 minutes to be exact. At around 3:50 in the morning, a waterspout hit the area where the yacht was located and it began to sway. But faced with the intensity of the storm, the anchor finally gave way 9 minutes after the start of the bad weather. "We can see that there is nothing left to hold on to", indicates a source close to the investigation.

From that moment on, everything accelerates. The “Bayesian” begins to take on water at 4 a.m. The water has reached the generator area or the engine room since there is a power outage, the Italian media reports. It is only a matter of minutes before it sinks.

At 4:06 a.m., the coast guard receives an alert signal from the emergency device. This is triggered automatically and indicates the exact position of the boat. But the yacht eventually sank. It sank first by the bow before descending vertically to the bottom of the water.

They were trying to get to safety

“We found them all on the highest side of the sailboat. We had the maps with the location of the cabins and the positions of the guests, and that's not where we then retrieved them. “Evidently, when the water came in, they tried to move, seeking safety,” a source close to the investigation noted.