Sicily Yacht Company CEO Shares "Endless" Errors That May Have Led to Fatal Sinking Tragedy

The CEO behind the sunken superyacht believes the tragedy in Sicily could have been prevented. 

Just days after superyacht the Bayesian sank off the coast of Palermo, Italy during a freak storm early Aug. 19, Giovanni Costantino, the founder and CEO of The Italian Sea Group which owns the company that built the ship in 2008, is shedding light on what he believes was an "endless chain of errors from the crew."

"Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors," he told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera Aug. 21, in an interview translated from Italian. "The people should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor."

As Costantino explained, the crew should have known about the storm, calling the claim that it was sudden and unexpected untrue.

"It was all predictable. I have the weather charts here in front of me," he said. "Ask yourself: why were no fishermen from Porticello out that night? A fisherman reads the weather conditions and a ship doesn't? The storm was fully legible in all the weather charts. It couldn't have been ignored."

The CEO also asserted the Bayesian was "one of the safest boats in the world" and practically "unsinkable."

"I'm saying that, in fact, mistakes were made," he added. "There's a world between the arrival of a storm and the loading of water. A series of activities had to be done to avoid finding ourselves in that situation."

In order to have avoided the tragedy, he explains that the first step would have been to armor the hull and deck "by closing all the doors and hatches, after having placed the guests in the assembly point of the ship as per emergency procedure."

Twenty-two people were originally on the yacht when it sank, including 10 crew members and 12 guests. The group had come together to celebrate the acquittal of tech tycoon Mike Lynch on charges of fraud related to Hewlett Packard's $11 billion takeover of his company Autonomy Corp.

Unfortunately, Lynch's body was recovered on Aug. 22 from the ship's hull. The bodies of Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy Bloomer and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo had been recovered on Aug. 21.

Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah is the sixth and final missing person, with rescuers still searching for her.

In all, 15 of the 22 passengers survived the wreckage—one of them Lynch's wife Angela Bacares—while the body of the ship's cook Renaldo Thomas was recovered following the sinking.

One survivor, Charlotte Golunski, recounted the harrowing experience, sharing how she, her 1-year-old Sophie and partner James Emsley survived.

"For two seconds, I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves," she told Italian newspaper La Repubblica Aug. 20, per the BBC. "It was all dark. In the water I couldn't keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others." 

According to Golunski, a lifeboat was soon inflated that 11 of the survivors—including her family—climbed in.

Director of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency Salvatore Cocina had previously stated that it was likely a waterborne tornado—known as a waterspout—that struck the area and caused the tragedy. He noted that the yacht was unfortunately "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

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