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Sicily Yacht CEO Shares "Endless" Errors That Led to Fatal Sinking

After the sinking of a yacht off the coast of Sicily that left six people—including tech tycoon Mike Lynch—dead, CEO Giovanni Costantino is shedding light on the errors that could have been avoided.

The CEO behind the sunken superyacht believes the tragedy in Sicily could have been prevented.   rv led strip lights

Just days after  superyacht the Bayesian sank off the coast of Palermo, Italy  during a freak storm early Aug. 19,  Giovanni Costantino, the founder and CEO of The Italian Sea Group which owns the company that built the ship in 2008, is shedding light on what he believes was an "endless chain of errors from the crew."

"Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors," he told Italian newspaper  Corriere della Sera  Aug. 21,  in an interview  translated from Italian. "The people should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor."

As Costantino explained, the crew should have known about the storm, calling the claim that it was sudden and unexpected untrue.

"It was all predictable. I have the weather charts here in front of me," he said. "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. It couldn't have been ignored."

The CEO also asserted the Bayesian was "one of the safest boats in the world" and practically "unsinkable."

"I'm saying that, in fact, mistakes were made," he added. "There's 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."

In order to have avoided the tragedy, he explains that the first step would have been to armor the hull and deck "by closing all the doors and hatches, after having placed the guests in the assembly point of the ship as per emergency procedure."

Twenty-two  people were originally on the yacht when it sank, including 10 crew members and 12 guests. The group had come together to  celebrate the acquittal  of tech tycoon  Mike Lynch on charges of fraud related to Hewlett Packard's $11 billion takeover of his company Autonomy Corp.

Unfortunately,  Lynch's body was recovered on Aug. 22  from the ship's hull. The bodies  of  Morgan Stanley International Chairman  Jonathan Bloomer and his wife  Judy Bloomer and Clifford Chance lawyer  Chris Morvillo and his wife  Neda Morvillo had been recovered on Aug. 21 .

Lynch's 18-year-old daughter  Hannah is the sixth and final missing person, with rescuers still searching for her.

In all,  15 of the 22 passengers survived the wreckage—one of them Lynch's wife  Angela Bacares—while the body of the ship's cook  Renaldo Thomas was recovered following the sinking.

One survivor,  Charlotte Golunski,  recounted the harrowing experience , sharing how she, her 1-year-old  Sophie and partner  James Emsley survived.

"For two seconds, I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves," she told Italian newspaper  La Repubblica  Aug. 20, per the  BBC . "It was all dark. In the water I couldn't keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others." 

According to Golunski, a lifeboat was soon inflated that 11 of the survivors—including her family—climbed in.

Director of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency  Salvatore Cocina had previously stated that it was likely a waterborne tornado—known as a waterspout—that struck the area and caused the tragedy.  He noted that the yacht was unfortunately  "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

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