Bayesian causes of the sinking of the Perini motorsailer the tornado the wind the incompetence of the captain who was perhaps asleep

Palermo 22 August 2024 by Jack Sparrow

All of us seafarers know that when there are atmospheric risks, guests on board must stay on deck as close as possible to the emergency exits. The evening of the sinking of the Bayesian, guests on board were sleeping in their cabins, as if it were any other day. We saw what happened from the cameras of the private marina that were pointed at the vessel. In 60 seconds the tornado managed to swallow the 56-meter Perini without leaving it any escape. The tornado raised the sea water that poured like a stone into the vessel.

In normal sailing boats, the entrance to the deck is usually small, for a simple reason, when the sea rises the under deck must be sealed immediately and the guests can wait for the end of the storm if the boat is unmanageable. The Perini is not really a sailing boat but a motorsailer with large windows overlooking the deck. In fact, the Perini is not an unsinkable vessel as the facts demonstrate. When the immense mass of water raised by the tornado fell on the vessel, it must have happened like an explosion and the glass of the upper deck shattered allowing the sea water to flood the entire vessel in a few seconds, thus pushing it towards the bottom. This immense liquid push hurled all the objects downwards, therefore in the corridors that led to the cabins. This fact prevented the guests from being able to easily exit the cabins and reach the to reach the emergency location in case of need to abandon ship. But these precautions were not taken by anyone and the atmospheric event was underestimated by the only person responsible for that vessel, its commander. There is no doubt that the sinking of the ship was due mostly to the inexperience of its commander, who was unable to impose on the guests of the vessels the safety measures that must always be respected in times of storm or serious atmospheric events. The Perini is an immense, very wide sailing boat built like a ladle and without a lid if it takes on water it cannot maintain buoyancy. It must be said that that Perini mounted an oversized mast of exceptional weight that did not give the functional capacity of a sailing hull to capsize and return to the surface after a turn of the keel. The Perini was already at the limit of its floating capacity, an exaggerated structure whose strength coupled with the weight of the water caused it to sink rapidly.

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"Everything that has been done reveals a very long series of errors". The speaker is Giovanni Costantino, the founder and CEO of The Italian Sea Group, the company that owns the assets of Perini Navi of Viareggio that built the Bayesian in 2008. He does not want to see that sailing jewel that he defines as "one of the safest boats in the world" under accusation. Practically "unsinkable. Obviously: unless it takes on water. There is no other explanation. The Palermo event would certainly have represented a zero risk if the correct maneuvers had been done and if situations had not occurred that compromised the stability of the ship". 

"There are a couple of passages that we have examined. The ship - he observes - was at anchor. At a certain point the anchor loses its grip and it moves, dragged by the wind that pushes it, taking it in the belly. He pushes it for 4 minutes that we call 'leeching', he rotates it and puts it in the position in which it sank. In these 4 minutes - and I take responsibility for what I say - the ship has already taken on water".

Costantino lists the long series of errors. "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 storm? The passengers reported something absurd, that is, that the storm arrived unexpectedly, suddenly. It's not true. It was all predictable. I have the weather charts here in front of me. Suddenly, nothing arrived... 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. You couldn't not know".

Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors - he adds -. There is 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. As the commander of the ship, I would have moved, but even if for some reason I had to stay there, I would have managed those weather conditions which, let's face it, were not that crazy. After all, the commander of the Sir Robert, next to us, managed everything without problems".

"From the video images that you all published, you can see the vertical mast first completely on and then off, except for the light bulb at the top that takes energy from a battery", continues Costantino. It was taking on water "because if the ship went into blackout it means that it was the water that caused the short circuit. Did the generator take on water? The engine room? The stern hatch was certainly open - the divers say so - and we think that perhaps something else was open too: there are doors in the superstructure that, even with a 30-degree inclination, if opened, would have taken on water. In that position, with the ship 'dead', that is, without management, and with the wind pushing, it tilted 90 degrees for one reason only: because the water continued to come in. From when it started to come in to when it went down, 6 minutes passed. Anyone who says it disappeared in a few seconds is talking nonsense".

To avoid the shipwreck "to begin with, in a situation of weather alert, it was inappropriate to have, as I read, a party. Not that evening. The hull and deck had to be armored by closing all the doors and hatches, after having placed the guests in the assembly point of the ship as per emergency procedure. Then turn on the engines and pull up the anchor or release it automatically, put the bow to the wind and send down the keel. The next morning they would have left with zero damage".

Hannah, the youngest of just 18 years old, has not yet been found by the divers who are scanning the Bayesian.

The search for the girl inside the hull has continued all day and will resume tomorrow morning while outside the coast guard robot is scouring the sandy bottom filming and photographing the area. The girl remains the only missing person, the body of her father, Mike Lynch, is the fifth body recovered today inside the yacht, 50 meters deep and half a mile from Porticello, where the sailing ship sank shortly before dawn last Monday while a violent air tomb was raging. Yesterday the divers had brought to the surface the bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, president of Morgan Stanley International, his wife Anne Elizabeth, the lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada.