Airtight doors?
Search operations “ended late yesterday evening (Tuesday, editor's note) and resumed at dawn” today, indicated on Wednesday at X the firefighters whose divers on Tuesday managed to enter the sailboat lying on its right side at a depth of 50 m, “a long and complicated operation”. A coast guard official, Captain Vincenzo Zagarola, told Italian radio on Tuesday that it was “hard to imagine” that the search could end well.
But experts pointed out that yachts like the “Bayesian” are designed with watertight doors that can create air pockets allowing the chance of survival for a period of time. “There have been cases of survivors in these types of airbags,” recalled Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a British engineering expert and member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, in a commentary provided by the Science Media Centre.
He cited the case of Nigerian sailor Harrison Okenerescued in 2013 after spending nearly three days trapped in an air pocket after his ship capsized in rough seas off the coast of Nigeria. “It's simply impossible to predict whether air pockets have formed on the Bayesian,” he added, however.
The party was in full swing on “Bayesian”
A few hours before the tornado struck at dawn on Monday, the party was in full swing on the 'Bayesian', a 56-metre yacht flying the British flag moored 700 meters off Porticello harbour, east of Palermo. and on board. which were 12 passengers and 10 crew members.
Mike Lynch, a wealthy businessman dubbed the “British Bill Gates”, celebrated with his friends, associates and lawyers his acquittal in June in a US fraud trial that could have cost him many years in prison . The ship sank within minutes and 15 people, including nine crew members, were rescued, one crew member was found dead and six passengers are still missing.