3 days ago
Mike Lynch's widow ‘felt safe' on yacht minutes before it sank
The widow of the British IT tycoon Mike Lynch has told investigators that she had total faith in the Bayesian superyacht and its crew in the minutes before it sank in a storm off Sicily last August.
Angela Bacares said she was confident after ten years of sailing on the yacht which had ridden out a violent storm in Naples days earlier. 'I felt safe on the boat,' she said, adding that she was 'reassured by the crew'.
The sinking in the early hours of August 19 claimed the lives of her 18-year-old daughter and her husband, who had organised a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate his victory in a US fraud trial.
Five others also drowned and 15 survived, including all but one of the crew members, as the $40 million yacht rolled over in high wind and sank while anchored off Porticello near Palermo.
Magistrates have placed crew members, including the captain, James Cutfield, under investigation.
In her first account of those moments to magistrates, made last year and now released by the TV programme Quarta Repubblica, Bacares, 58, said she was woken up by movement at 4am as the storm gained strength, and went up on deck, but said she was calm.
'In these ten years I had been afraid of hitting rocks or getting trapped by the anchor of another boat, but I had never thought something catastrophic could occur. I had never felt it necessary to wake up others because of rough weather.' said Bacares, whose company owned the Bayesian.
'The boat was rocking but not enough to move things in the room. I was not worried, I was curious about what was happening,' she said.
As the boat tipped over on its side and water entered, the captain reassured her it would turn no further because it was already at 90 degrees.
'I believed my husband and my daughter would have been able to swim up. I was convinced the boat would not turn over,' she said. Seconds later she was swimming in open sea as the yacht vanished from sight.
Magistrates are now set to decide whether to bring crew members to trial. An interim report by the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch has criticised the design of the vessel, including its unusually tall mast.
