The mysteries of the Bayesian shipwreck and speculation about the cause of the sinking

The chronicles of the summer have brought us a crescendo of small and large shipwrecks involving pleasure boats. Dramatic images from Formetera, where dozens of boats went 'aground' in the storm. There is no shortage of boats set on fire, almost always due to the lithium batteries of the 'toys' that entertain guests. The most dramatic one, sudden and with that dose of inescapable destiny that could place it in a sea novel, is the one of the past few days: the 56-metre Perini Navi Bayesian went down in a few minutes due to a whirlwind that hit it a few hundred metres from Porticello near Palermo.

There were 22 on board, 10 crew and 12 guests. Seven people died, even if the chronicle calls them missing by now there are few doubts, including the shipowner Mike Lynch, considered the Bill Gates of England, his daughter Hanna and Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Chris Morvillo, lawyer of the law firm Clifford Chance who had represented Lynch in a US trial, with his wife. It is understood from the information that it was a cruise organised by Lynch himself with his most trusted associates as a reward for his most recent activities.

As to the precise causes, there are still many doubts, and only the investigations already underway will explain why. It is certainly surprising that a ship built to cope with all weather conditions (some sisterships like Roseharty have reached Patagonia and Cape Horn) sinks only a few dozen metres from the coast.

The first findings of the divers, who went down to search for the missing, seem to confirm that the boat is in one piece, i.e. that the first hypothesis of a broken mast due to a mistranslation of the words of the boat captain who gave first aid does not seem true. However, in a way it is worse: a ship subjected to constant checks to comply with safety regulations (in this case ABS, American Bureau of Shipping) that go into sometimes ridiculous details about the size of the screws sank within minutes.

It was not the forces of evil from a Jules Verne or Joseph Conrad novel, not the Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the nature of a remnant of the sea a few miles from Palermo. Perini Navi has built a dozen of these boats, the original design of the 56-metre hull was with a ketch rig, that is, with two masts that split the sail plan so as to keep the centre of thrust low. The first owner of this ship, which was originally called Salute and which Lynch had renamed Bayesian in honour of the mathematician Thomas Bayes to whom he owes the algortimo that made him rich, had wanted to build in 2008 the sloop with the tallest mast in the world: 75 metres in all, full of sensors to control its loads. Before this, Mirabella had been built, a 75-metre long ship with an 85-metre mast, but made of carbon and which fell during a storm while at anchor in the Gulf of Cannes.