“We are not ruling anything out,” prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told a news conference after the luxury yacht “Bayesian” sank at dawn on Monday in a storm.
The 56 meter luxury super yacht sank within minutes after a sudden waterspout. Fifteen people were rescued, including six passengers.
The speed with which the yacht sank and the fact that other boats around it were not affected raise questions, including whether the weighted keel, which counterbalances the massive mast, was lowered or raised at the time of the storm.
“Long string of errors”
The head of Italian Sea Group, owner of the Perini Navi shipyard that built the Bayesian, pointed the finger at human error.
“Everything that happened reveals a long series of errors. The passengers should not be in the cabins, the ship should not be anchored” in these weather conditions, said Giovanni Costantino in an interview on Thursday for Corriere della Sera.
Nautilus International, a maritime union, responded by calling for a “thorough and impartial investigation” in a press release.
Mark Dickinson, the general secretary of Nautilus International, warned against questioning the crew's behavior “without knowing all the facts”, which would be “not only unfair but detrimental to the discovery process”.
15 million euros for the removal of the wreckage
Bayesian, owned by his Lynch family, had a 75-meter mast, the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to charter company Charter World's website.
The delicate and complex refloating operation is likely to cost around €15m and take “six to eight weeks”, according to the official leading the recovery of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off Italy in 2012 .