Ten months after the luxury superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily in a sudden storm, salvage crews managed to lift it 50 meters (164 feet) from the seabed on Friday afternoon, the company running the $30 million recovery operation said.
The superyacht was scheduled to be lifted at the weekend, but salvage crews from TMC Marine said the process went faster than anticipated.
The top of the hull is now visible above the surface and TMC Marine said it will be lifted fully out of the water on Saturday.
The 56-meter (184-foot) superyacht went down in less than a minute when hurricane-force winds swept through the area on August 19, 2024. Seven people, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died. Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owns the $40 million vessel, the ship’s captain and all but one crew member.
A Dutch salvage worker also died in an underwater explosion when the salvage operation began in May, prompting the company to replace most of the human divers with underwater robots.
That change in strategy led to “accelerated progress” in the operation to attach the lifting straps to the hull, which was originally scheduled to finish by the end of the month, the company said.
Marcus Cave, head of naval architecture and a director of TMC Marine, said in a statement Friday: “The salvage team has made very substantive progress in the last 10 days. They are now preparing for the final, complex and delicate lifting operation, to bring Bayesian to the surface and ultimately into port.
“This is a challenging programme of activity, that will be progressed in a measured and systematic way.”
Earlier this week, salvage workers used a remote-controled, diamond-wire precision-cutting tool to remove the vessel’s 72-meter (236-foot) mast.
Once the mast was removed, the salvage company was able to finish attaching eight steel lifting slings to the hull, and partially parbuckled the ship to an upright position on the seabed.
Final stabilizers, hoses and other rigging were attached before the yacht was lifted by one of Europe’s most powerful floating cranes, which had been brought in for the job.
The Bayesian sank with 18,000 liters of fuel on board, which has not been removed. Oil booms were laid around the work site to protect the area from potential pollution.
On Friday afternoon, the top of the yacht, now covered in clay and algae, emerged out of the water. It is now being held in an upright position to allow water to drain out before it is taken to the Sicilian port of Termini Imerse on Monday.
There, it will be placed in a specially built steel cradle and sequestered while investigators carry out forensic investigations that may reveal the definitive cause of the accident.
The ship’s captain, James Cutfield, and two crew members are currently under investigation for their role in the deadly accident, and investigators need to examine the ship to determine whether human error or a design flaw led to the sinking.
They will also secure any possessions, including what are believed to be watertight safes in which Lynch kept encrypted hard drives.
Remote-controlled submersibles were previously used to recover the yacht’s anchor and boom, which were brought to the surface in May. An uninflated lifeboat and deck furniture have also already been recovered.
Lynch had organized the cruise to celebrate his acquittal in June 2024 on 15 felony charges in a United States court tied to the $11 billion sale of one of his companies to Hewlett-Packard.
His co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, also acquitted on all charges, died on the same day the Bayesian went down, two days after he was struck by a car while out jogging in the United Kingdom.