The maker of Mike Lynch’s yacht says it took 16 minutes to sink and the crew should have had time to rescue passengers – MASHAHER

• Mike Lynch and six others are dead after his superyacht sank off Sicily’s coast.

• The Bayesian sank during a storm. The Italian Sea Group CEO said the yacht took 16 minutes to sink.

• Giovanni Costantino told the Financial Times the ship was “designed to be absolutely stable.”

The maker of Mike Lynch’s doomed superyacht said the luxury sailing vessel was “absolutely stable” and never should have sunk as he blamed the crew for an “incredible mistake.”

The 183-foot ship — named the Bayesian — sank during stormy weather near Palermo, Italy, in the early hours of Monday local time.

Fifteen people, including Lynch’s wife, were rescued, while seven others — including Lynch, a UK tech tycoon — have been confirmed dead.

Divers discovered the body of the final person missing from the superyacht on Friday, the Italian coast guard said, according to reports. The Washington Post and CNN both reported that the last body found was believed to be Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Giovanni Costantino, the CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini Navi, the firm that built the Bayesian in 2008, said the ship was “designed to be absolutely stable” as it had the second-tallest mast in the world.

“The torture lasted 16 minutes. It went down, not in one minute as some scientists have said. It went down in 16 minutes,” Costantino told the Financial Times. “You can see it from the charts, from the [Automatic Identification System] tracking chart.”

Business Insider could not independently verify his statement, and Costantino did not immediately return requests for comment.

Costantino added that the yacht’s skipper “should have locked everything up, saying: “He should have gathered all passengers in the safe point. This is protocol. No one should have been in their cabin.”

In an interview on Thursday with Reuters, Costantino placed the blame for the deadly tragedy on the yacht’s crew members, saying that they made the “incredible mistake” of not being prepared for the powerful storm that rolled in.

“This is the mistake that cries out for vengeance,” Costantino told Reuters, which reported that the storm was projected in shipping forecasts.

Maritime legal experts previously told BI that the operator of the sunken yacht should lawyer up in anticipation of claims from families of the dead or the survivors themselves.

“The boat suffered a series of indescribable, unreasonable errors; the impossible happened on that boat … but it went down because it took on water. From where, the investigators will tell,” Costantino told Reuters.

An investigation into the exact cause of the sinking is ongoing.

Authorities previously confirmed a strong storm had been in the area, though search-and-rescue experts have suggested that multiple factors could have contributed to the disaster.

One theory is that soaring temperatures in the area caused passengers and crew to leave windows and doors open, which would have allowed water to fill the ship quickly during the storm.

“The boat sank because it took on water,” Costantino told the FT.

He added that a large opening just above the waterline on the stern could have been left open and become flooded.

Out of the 15 who escaped, nine were crew members. One of them, a chef named Recaldo Thomas, was confirmed dead Monday.

Stephen Askins, a lawyer specializing in maritime cases, told MailOnline that the crew was likely already awake before the ship sunk, while the passengers may have been sleeping below deck.

“The water came in from [hatchways] left open,” Costantino told the FT. “There is no other possible explanation. If maneuvered properly, the boat would have comfortably handled the weather — comfortably.”

Matthew Schanck, a maritime search-and-rescue consultant, previously told BI that the disaster was “shocking” because Lynch’s vessel was a “modern, state-of-the-art superyacht” that would have been commercially certified with the appropriate safety regulations in place.

Witnesses told BBC News they saw a waterspout — an uncommon weather phenomenon consisting of tornadolike wind and water — before the ship went down.

“This tends to have been the accepted theory, that the vessel was hit by a waterspout and the crew didn’t see it coming because it was nighttime and dark,” Schanck said.

He added that this scenario made sense but questioned how witnesses would have noticed a waterspout if the crew hadn’t seen it.

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