Key questions facing investigators

It will be a long time before we get answers as to how exactly the British-flagged Bayesian yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.

The luxury superyacht was carrying 22 people when a severe storm struck early on Monday, August 19, causing a waterspout.

Seven bodies have been recovered from the wreck.

As Italian authorities continue to investigate the circumstances of the incident, speculation has swirled about what went wrong, pointing to faults with the captain, crew and the yacht itself.

But experts told the BBC that this was likely a “black swan” event due to abnormal weather and no one was necessarily at fault.

Here are the key questions investigators will ask as they look into the tragedy.

Investigators will carefully examine the role of the ship’s keel.

The keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from the bottom.

The bottom of the keel (the lowest part of the boat) contains a massive weight, the ball, that keeps the boat stable. When the wind pushes the boat sideways, the keel rises out of the water until, like a seesaw, its weight pushes the boat back to a horizontal position.

On Bayesian-sized boats, the keel is usually designed to be retractable so that the boat can dock in less deep areas, such as a harbor.

When the keel is raised, the stability of the boat is greatly reduced.

In this case, Bayes’s wreckage was found at a depth of 50m (164ft), indicating that there was no reason for the keel to need to be recovered.

But that doesn’t mean the captain or crew is at fault.

According to the “Daily Telegraph” report, a spokesman for the Italian Marine Group, which built the Bayes, said, “Even if the keel is not fully extended, the ship is stable and only a large amount of water will cause it to sink.

Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a fellow at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects and editor-in-chief of Sailing Boat Technology Magazine, said investigators wanted to know whether the keel was “up, down or somewhere in the middle.”

The captain of the Bayes, James Catfield, reportedly told Italian media that he could not have foreseen the storm that hit the Bayes.

But we do know that severe weather is forecast in advance.

Luca Mercali, president of the Italian Meteorological Society, said on Tuesday that given the poor weather forecast, crews should ensure all guests are awake and assign them life jackets.

One survivor reportedly told medical staff that the boat started sinking two minutes after she fell asleep.

Severe weather is one thing, but waterspouts are another thing entirely. This was not something the crew could have predicted.

An expert on the scene in Sicily told Reuters that an early focus of the investigation would be whether the yacht’s crew failed to close the hatch before bad weather struck.

But experts say that on a ship of this size, simply opening the hatch may not be enough to sink the Bayes.

There are other water entry points around the boat, called “drop points”, which serve, among other things, to ventilate the engine room.

“Obviously there will be questions about the crew, what happened and whether they were prepared,” Mr Supes said.

“But it’s important to remember that the ship sank within minutes, so literally in the middle of the night, the crew was able to keep so many people on board alive, deploy flares, and take action in the heat that was a A difficult task,” he said.

“It’s hard to say exactly what happened here,” said Dr. Paul Stout, a fellow at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.

“But faced with such a sudden and catastrophic weather event, it is unlikely that the crew would have responded in any way to save the yacht.”

Speaking to BBC News, Italian police confirmed that an investigation was ongoing but that no charges had been laid.

The coast guard, on behalf of prosecutors, questioned the yacht’s captain, James Catfield, eight surviving crew members and passengers.

In such cases, officials typically conduct an extensive investigation (called a “hypothesis”) to consider a range of possible criminal charges.

A doctor treating survivors said the ship “capsized within minutes”.

A key question is how exactly this happened, and how it happened so quickly.

“In order for a vessel to sink, especially at these speeds, you would see water entering the interior of the vessel along its entire length,” Mr Supes said.

“Containers like this are not really designed to withstand temperatures of 90 degrees for any length of time,” Mr. Supes said.

“So if the vessel found itself at a 90-degree angle, you would expect water to get inside whether the hatches were open or not. Although this would obviously speed up the process.

Some speculate that the waterspouts flying over the Bayes may have been “popped” by the mast, dumping large amounts of water onto the ship – and causing it to sink rapidly.

Witnesses said they saw a waterspout during the storm before the Bayes sank.

Most people are familiar with what tornadoes look like – they are rotating columns of damaging wind that protrude from the base of the clouds to the ground.

The same goes for waterspouts, but on water rather than land, according to BBC Weather. There are fears they may become more common as climate change causes sea temperatures to rise.

According to the International Waterspout Research Center, 18 waterspouts were confirmed along the Italian coast on August 19 alone.

But the likelihood of a direct hit on a ship – as has been speculated – remains very low.

“I think the bottom line is that even if there’s a problem with the keel or hatch opening, you might still see a freak weather accident,” Mr Supes said.

Mr Stout said: “This may have been a very safe, modern design but it encountered unusual weather conditions that no design could cope with.”