Rome
CNN
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Salvage crews have recovered the boom from the $40 million Bayesian luxury yacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily in August 2024, killing seven people, including British billionaire tech tycoon Michael Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah.
The boom, which was connected to the 72-meter (236-foot) mast—one of the tallest on any sailboat—is the first known piece of debris to brought out of the water.
On May 9, a 39-year-old Dutch specialist diver Robcornelis Maria Huijben Uiben died in an underwater explosion when trying to detach the boom from the vessel, Italian Coast Guard officials said. The recovery of the boom will be part of the forensic investigation into the diver’s death, officials told CNN.
The 55.9 meter (184-foot) yacht, which still has 18,000 liters of fuel onboard, went down in a sudden storm on August 19 while moored near Porticello, Sicily near Palermo.
Fifteen people, including nine crew members, survived.
British investigators, who were on the scene days after the accident, published a “desktop” report last week in which they concluded that the ship sank due to structural problems with the vessel.
Italian investigators have publicly dismissed the findings and have told local reporters that until the vessel can be examined once out of the water, no conclusion into the cause of the sinking can be determined. The ship is lying on its starboard side on the seabed, meaning no images have been taken of that part of the vessel to determine its condition.
An official with Smit Salvage, which is part of the salvage team led by TMC Marine, told CNN that the hatches appear open, meaning the crew may not have battened down the hatches as the storm approached. One of the crew members posted a video of the storm in the distance, which investigators say shows that they were aware of the weather, according to the British report.
No one has been charged with any criminal culpability in the accident, but the ship captain James Cutfield and two other crew members are under investigation for their role in the deaths of the passengers, which included one crew member.
The vessel is thought to contain watertight safes in which Lynch kept highly encrypted hard drives. Investigators have told CNN that they cannot verify the existence of any safes or contents until the ship is brought out of the water.
The timetable to lift the yacht from the seabed some 50 meters below the surface of the water originally stated that the mast and boom would be left on the seabed until after the hull of the luxury yacht is pulled out of the water. The boom was instead brought out first to aid in the investigation into the salvage diver’s death. It is unclear when the mast, which is being cut from the vessel, will be pulled from the water.
The hull of the yacht is scheduled to be brought up between May 26 and May 28, weather permitting. Once emptied of water, the wreckage will be lifted by crane to the port of Termini Imerese where it will be sequestered and examined by officials. A full report is expected by the end of the summer.
