Billionaire Yacht Was Piloted Recklessly Before Deadly Sinking, Its Builder Warns

"Everything that has been done reveals a very long sum of errors."

Blame Game

The builder of the sunken superyacht owned by British billionaire Mike Lynch, who died with six others after the vessel went down earlier this week, is blaming an "endless chain of errors" for the maritime disaster.

Flying under a British flag, the 184 foot Bayesian was built in 2008 by Italian builders Perini Navi and should've been "unsinkable" had proper procedures been followed, argues Giovanni Costantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns the yacht manufacturer.

"Everything that has been done reveals a very long sum of errors," Costantino told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview, as translated by People. "The people should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor. And then why didn't the crew know about the incoming disturbance?"

Red Sky at Morning

An investigation into the sinking is ongoing. It's believed that a small waterspout, or a waterborne tornado, struck the vessel as it was anchored off the coast of Porticello, Sicily, around 5 am local time on Monday, according to CNN.

At some point after encountering the fierce winds, the ship's towering mast — the second tallest aluminum mast in the world — snapped, before the vessel appears to have capsized and sank with 22 people on board.

Costantino argues — pretty bluntly, we have to say — that the crew and passengers should've anticipated the stormy conditions.

"The passengers reported an absurd thing, namely that the storm came unexpected, suddenly," he said in the interview, per People. "It's not true. Everything was predictable. I have the weather charts in front of me here. Nothing came suddenly."

"Ask yourself, why was no fisherman from Porticello out that night?" he added. "A fisherman reads the weather conditions and a ship doesn't? The disturbance was fully readable in all the weather charts."

Batten Down

Their errors didn't end there, according to Costantino, who said in the interview that there would've been "zero risk" had the right maneuvers been made.

The captain and crew, he further explained to the New York Times, should've turned on the engine, lifted anchor, steered the boat into the wind, and lowered the keel for extra stability, while the passengers should've been gathered in the deck's main hall.

Another precaution would be shutting all the doors and hatches on the ship's side and stern. Costantino claimed that the Bayesian could list, or tilt to one side, to 75 degrees without capsizing, and shouldn't have sunk. But if some of those doors and hatches were left open, he told NYT, the ship could've taken on water too quickly.

As it stands, it's unclear how many of these procedures were executed. The ship's captain, James Cutfield, survived the ordeal and was questioned by authorities, but has not spoken to the media.

It's worth noting that Costantino's arguments could be seen as trying to exonerate his company of any wrongdoing. That being said, the speed at which a vessel of Bayesian's size and reputation sank has stunned sailors and investigators, who are trying to understand why most of the crew survived while six passengers perished.

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