Bayesian

I wanted to remember August 2024 for breaking new visitors record on PowerYachtBlog, which reached over 860,000 views in a month, nearly double to the previous 473,000 from July. But alas August 2024 will be remembered for sailing yacht Bayesian, a 2008 build 56 meter Perini navi super sloop which sank off Porticello to the East of Palermo on Monday nineteen at 04:06 early morning time taking down the life of seven people; the owner Mike Lync, five guests and the chef.  Super yachting never got so much news as the week following seventeen August! 

Bayesian is reported to might have sunk from a down burst, a sort of Tornado but with winds that descend and diverge beneath the storm and result in outward burst patterns of damage or wide areas mostly from the same direction.  Captain and crew mistakes are yet to be proved in a court room, but the yacht visible structure seems to be intact as is its much maligned record sized mast, which received the first guilt for the sinking from mainstream and social media alike. Bayesian sinking took a total of sixteen minutes, an increase from the first reported two minutes. Still not a lot, but sixteen minutes should give time to a professional crew to make the yacht from beach mode into a safer modus operandi.

The publicity from the sinking of Bayesian is huge, its not positive, but some would say as long as they talk about it, it is good.  I am sure that since the story broke Perini Navi has become the most recognizable super sailing yacht to the common folk.  Not that a Perini was not recognizable, they were for the yacht man, and now everyone knows them. 

What I see interesting following the investigation is what the classification societies will make of this.  Will we see more strict rules being enforced on super yachts from Classification Societies, or will all this be filed as crew mistakes.  If Class Societies will open a can of worms for yachts, which are probably the safer think you can have ten, twenty people on, imagine the resolve of this on the commercial sector, or even worse of the even expanding cruise industry.  I guess time will tell.

Bayesian was the fifth hull of ten build Perini's 56 meter semi custom series line which debuted in 2003 with the last one delivered in 2011, featuring an important difference that she is the only one sloop rigged, versus the other nine hulls who are all double mast ketch.  I still think the mast blaming is a bit over the top, also because the yacht is seventeen years old, and has done a lot of running around.  This size yachts are mostly all build to class; Bayesian is American Bureau of Shipping classed to A1 standards and is reported to have had its class survey in 2022, so nearly nothing is given to chance especially stability from a mast for a yacht which is made to circum-navigate the globe.   

The sinking and the deaths involved also give the story fire for conspiracy theories, although some of it does look odd, like Lync partner Stephen Chamberlain who died in Hospital on Tuesday twentieth August after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England on Saturday seventeenth.  It is difficult to stop conspirers on this one, and as they say, one plus one equals two, the maths are in their favour.