Sunken luxury superyacht lifted out of the water off Sicily as salvage operate completes

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PORTICELLO, Italy — A British-flagged luxury superyacht that sank off Sicily last year, killing U.K. tech magnate Mike Lynch and six others, was lifted from the water Saturday as salvage recovery crews completed the complex operation to bring it ashore for further investigation. 

The white top and blue hull of the 56-metre (184-foot) Bayesian, covered with algae and mud, was visibly clear of the sea in a holding area of a yellow floating crane barge off the Sicilian port of Porticello. 

“The hull of the superyacht Bayesian has today been successfully and safely recovered from the sea off the coast of northern Sicily,” said TMC Maritime, the company conducting the recovery. “This follows a delicate lifting procedure that began early today.

TMC added that the hull will continue to be held “in an elevated position to allow expert salvage personnel to complete checks and preparations” ahead of its transportation into the Sicilian port of Termini Imerese on Sunday. 

The floating crane platform will move the Bayesian to the port, where a special steel cradle is waiting for it. The vessel will be then made available for investigators to help determine the cause of the sinking. 

The Bayesian sank Aug. 19 off Porticello, near Palermo, during a violent storm as Lynch was treating friends to a cruise to celebrate his acquittal two months earlier in the U.S. on fraud charges. Lynch, his daughter and five others died. Fifteen people survived, including the captain and all crew members except the chef. 

Italian authorities are conducting a full criminal investigation. 

The vessel has been slowly raised from the seabed, 50 metres (165-feet) down, over the past three days to allow the steel lifting straps, slings and harnesses to be secured under the keel. 

Eight steel lifting straps were used to put the hull upright and to form part of a steel wire lifting system that began raising the vessel out of the water Saturday. As the superyacht was raised, seawater was pumped out of the hull. 

The Bayesian is missing its 72-metre (236-foot) mast, which was cut off and left on the seabed for future removal. The mast had to be detached to allow the hull to be brought to a nearly upright position that would allow the craft to be raised. 

British investigators said in an interim report issued last month that the yacht was knocked over by “extreme wind” and couldn’t recover. 

The report said the crew of the Bayesian had chosen the site where it sank as shelter from forecast thunderstorms. Wind speeds exceeded 70 knots (81 m.p.h.) at the time of the sinking and “violently” knocked the vessel over to a 90-degree angle in under 15 seconds. 

Lynch, who sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011, had been acquitted of fraud charges in June 2024 by a federal court jury in San Francisco.