Moments before disaster: CCTV captures storm destroying £30million luxury superyacht before sinking ‘in 60 seconds’
Terrifying surveillance footage shows the Bayesian superyacht being engulfed in a massive storm that sinks it ‘within 60 seconds’.
Six people, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, and a Morgan Stanley director, are missing after the £30million vessel capsized yesterday during strange weather conditions.
Footage from a security camera on a villa just 200 metres from where the boat sank shows the ship anchored in the distance, its flashing lights just visible through the torrential rain.
The homeowner told the local newspaper: ‘In just sixty seconds you see the ship disappear. By chance, after all the fuss of the news, I was watching the cameras. My children told me.
“Of the twenty or so cameras installed in the house, only one was not disturbed by the wind and the rain. You can clearly see what is happening. There was nothing that could be done about the ship. It was gone in a very short time.”
There is a second video – which has not been published – showing the boat sinking, reports say Annual Holidays of Sicily.
Rescue workers frantically searching for survivors warn the next 24 hours are “critical” if there is any hope of finding anyone alive in a bubble.
It goes like this:
CCTV captured the final moments of the Bayesian superyacht before it disappeared beneath the waves during a violent storm on Monday morning
The superyacht was moored off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, when it was hit by a tornado over the sea, also known as a waterspout
An emergency and rescue boat sails at sea near the spot where the Bayesian sank when the disaster occurred just before 5 a.m. Monday
The luxury sailing ship Bayesian was moored off the coast of Porticello when a waterspout hit the ship
Teams of the Italian coast guard and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue operations using helicopters and ships to find missing people after the yacht sank on Monday
Search teams say the boat is 50 metres below the surface of the seabed and is so deep that dive teams can only go down for 10 minutes at a time, their work being hampered by furniture blocking the entrance.
An expert claimed the ship, which is almost completely intact despite not being “anchored in a safe place” before it sank, could have trapped air bubbles inside the vessel that could have kept survivors alive after the “unprecedented” disaster.
Nick Sloane, an engineer who led the recovery operation on the Costa Concordia, said “the next 24 hours are critical” if any missing people are to be found alive. There is a time limit of “two to three days” before someone who has found an air pocket runs out of oxygen.
There have been cases in the past of people surviving underwater for days in such conditions, but divers have warned they are prepared to find bodies rather than living, breathing survivors.
One person has been confirmed dead after the £30million superyacht was hit by a terrifying waterspout at around 5am, with the ship’s captain making an emotional statement from his hospital bed that he ‘didn’t see it coming’.
The luxury sailing ship was anchored just a few hundred metres off the coast of Porticello in calm seas when it was suddenly hit by a violent waterspout at around 5am on Monday morning.
Christopher Morvillo, left, works for Clifford Chance, a prestigious law firm. His wife Neda, right, runs her own high-end jewelry line under her maiden name Neda Nassiri
Neda Morvillo and her husband Christopher Morvillo are both missing after the superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday
Teams from the Italian Coast Guard Command and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue operations
According to nautical experts, the ship is believed to have sunk after its mast, one of the world’s tallest at 75 metres, snapped and capsized during the horrific incident, causing the hull to become larger than the ‘downward angle’.
