The divers opened the three-meter-wide glass and entered the common rooms of the ship. Access to the cabins on the lower deck, where six people are believed to be missing, remains blocked.
In the beginning, the work was hindered by the furniture, which was so stuck that it was impossible to get inside the yacht.
The 50-meter-long Bayesian wreck lies on the seabed at a depth of 49 meters. According to firefighters, the ship was turned on its side, which makes underwater work difficult. On Tuesday, divers already managed to inspect several rooms under the captain’s bridge.
A luxury yacht sank on Monday during a heavy storm off the port of the Sicilian city of Palermo. There were a total of 22 people on board. 15 of them managed to be saved after the disaster. At first, seven persons were considered missing, later one body was found in the water. Since then, the search for the six missing persons has been intensive.
According to authorities, four Britons and two US citizens are missing. Among them are British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter, as well as two married couples.
The hope of finding the missing alive is fading. According to Italian media, divers saw several bodies through portholes of the sunken ship.
The British-flagged 56-metre sailing yacht Bayesian, with 10 crew and 12 passengers, was anchored about 700 meters from the harbor when it was hit by a water vortex similar to a small tornado before dawn on Monday.
The 15 people on board, including a mother with a one-year-old child, were rescued, but one body was found hours later, that of a man who was reportedly the yacht’s chef.
On Tuesday, divers searching for the six people still missing strapped on oxygen cylinders and began descending in choppy seas to the wreckage, about 50 meters underwater.
That depth means each dive takes no more than 12 minutes, including two minutes for descent and ascent, according to fire department spokesman Luca Cari.
The passengers were guests of Mr Lynch, a high-profile tech entrepreneur and investor sometimes referred to as Britain’s Bill Gates, who was celebrating his recent acquittal in a massive US fraud case.
Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares was among 15 people rescued, but the businessman himself and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were missing, said Salvo Cocina, head of Sicily’s civil protection agency.
Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, who testified for Mr Lynch in the US case, has also disappeared along with his wife Judy, UK insurer Hiscox said on Tuesday.
Mr Bloomer is also chairman of Hiscox, which issued a statement saying it was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the incident.
Clifford Chance lawyer Christopher Morvillo, who represented Mr Lynch, was also on board with his wife, media reported.
Mr. Lynch, 59, was acquitted of all charges in a San Francisco court in early June, and he was charged with $11 billion. fraud involving the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
2024-08-21 10:36:18