The sinking of the luxury Bayesian yacht off the coast of Sicily this week resulted from an “endless chain of errors” by the crew, the ship maker’s CEO is speculating.
“This episode sounds like an unbelievable story, both technically and as a fact,” Giovanni Costantino — who leads The Italian Sea Group, the company that now owns Perini Navi, which built the Bayesian in 2008 — said, according to CNN.
While speaking to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Costantino said he believes those on board should not have been in their cabins, as he claims they were, when the Bayesian sank in the early hours of Monday, Aug. 19.
Many details of why the yacht went into the water so quickly remain unclear and it’s not yet known what the passengers and crew were doing before tragedy struck.
The 183-foot British vessel sank around 5 a.m. local time on Monday after a “violent storm” while near Porticello, the Italian coast guard said in a statement that was previously obtained.
“Everything that has been done reveals a very long sum 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 disturbance?” Costantino said in his interview, translated from Italian.
“The passengers reported an absurd thing, namely that the storm came unexpected, suddenly. It’s not true. Everything was predictable. I have the weather charts in front of me here. Nothing came suddenly … Ask yourself, why was no fisherman from Porticello out that night? A fisherman reads the weather conditions and a ship doesn’t? The disturbance was fully readable in all the weather charts. One could not not know,” he argued.
“An unsinkable ship but from the crew an endless chain of errors,” the CEO asserted.
The coast guard has said 22 people were aboard the Bayesian when it sank — 12 passengers and 10 crew — and that 15 of those were subsequently rescued.
The body of the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered nearby.
Five bodies have been found after the luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty
Costantino’s comments came as it was reported that five bodies had been found in the search for the missing six people as of Wednesday, Aug. 21, a source close to the rescue operations confirmed to PEOPLE. Authorities have said that their work is ongoing.
An Italian government official, Massimo Mariani, reportedly named one of the dead as British tech tycoon Mike Lynch. The other bodies have not yet been publicly identified by authorities.
Lynch was celebrating with family and friends on the yacht following his acquittal in a fraud trial in June, PEOPLE previously reported.
Costantino offered his view of how the tragedy could have been avoided: “To begin with, in a weather alert situation it was inappropriate to have, as I read, a party. Not that evening. The hull and deck needed to be secured by closing all doors and hatches, after putting the guests at the ship’s meeting point as per emergency procedure. Then start the engines and pull up the anchor or release it automatically, put the bow to the wind and lower the keel.
“The next morning they would have departed with zero damage.”
One person remains missing amid the incident.
Jonathan Brady/PA Images via Getty
When discussing whether the crew were at fault, Costantino reiterated to the Italian outlet that he believes “errors were made.”
“A series of activities should have been done to avoid finding oneself in that situation,” he said. “I as the ship’s captain would have moved, but even if for some reason I had to stay there, I would have managed those weather conditions which then, let’s face it, weren’t so crazy.”
Costantino contended that there would have been “a zero risk if the correct maneuvers had been made and if situations that compromised the ship’s stability had not occurred,” adding to the newspaper that reports that the boat went down in seconds is “nonsense.” He believes the yacht would have “went down” after water “started to enter” within “six minutes.”
The remaining missing Bayesian passengers are Lynch’s daughter Hannah as well as Chairman of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy, and New York City-based lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda, sources have said.
