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Superyacht Stardom – how the yacht guy got insta-famous

To many of us, it seems TheYachtGuy appeared overnight – suddenly there he was, top of our Instagram feeds, aboard yet another superyacht.  For Alex Jimenez, the man behind the handle, it was 10 years of hard work and dedication.  We caught up with Alex to find out how he made it into the superyacht spotlight.

Q1.  Life before The Yacht Guy – Before introducing yourself to the superyacht world as ‘TheYachtGuy’, what was life like for Alex Jimenez? I don’t think much has changed, really.  I’m just a regular guy with a job.  It’s a really cool job, granted, but for the most part, aside from some more traveling, things have remained the same.  I still sit at my local Dunkin Donuts having coffee, watch the family kids if someone needs me, etc.  The only time things change is when I have to travel for work, and get fully into YachtGuy mode.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by I Am The Yacht Guy (@iamtheyachtguy) on Oct 20, 2019 at 10:20pm PDT

Q3.  What have been some of the highlights so far in your career as TheYachtGuy? That’s a tough question, so many great times it’s hard to choose just one!  I can definitely say that hanging out aboard MY BINA a couple years’ back in the Caribbean for four days was nice – we went to St Barths, St Maarten and Anguilla. I recently sailed the Bosphorus in Turkey but a highlight of that trip was actually riding in a tiny tender with a few guys in some really choppy water – I remember all of us laughing and wondering what the hell were we thinking.

View this post on Instagram Out on the water during MYS shooting Lürssen’s with @taylorchien @tomvanoossanen and @redcharlie1 A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Sep 26, 2019 at 6:52am PDT

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Apr 17, 2019 at 11:05am PDT

Keep an eye out for more news from TheYachtGuy and his forthcoming projects by following him on Instagram, if you aren’t already…!    Follow TheYachtGuy.

Roxanne Hughes

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By SuperyachtNews 07 Jan 2016

TheYachtGuy: when Instagram meets superyachts

He’s got 699,000 followers in instagram and has turned his passion for superyachts and social media into a full-time business. we meet theyachtguy.….

He’s got 699,000 followers in Instagram and has turned his passion for superyachts and social media into a full-time business. We meet TheYachtGuy, also known as Alex.

You’d think the person with arguably the biggest social following in the superyacht industry would have had a game plan in place from the very beginning. But, as the man himself tells me, “ @theyachtguy was created by accident”. When Instagram came along in 2010, this superyacht fanatic found a place to upload all the photos of superyachts he’d saved off the internet. “Once I realised I was gaining a following, I changed my name from an email address to ‘theyachtguy’. It was a great way to talk to and meet people with like interests.” 

It wasn’t until TheYachtGuy met @watchanish (Anish) @thebillionaresclub (Ian and Alehandro) and @luxuryworldtraveler (Gil) and was given advice on how to turn a hobby into a business that TheYachtGuy took the steps to transform into what we see today.

And while TheYachtGuy has other social media channels, Instagram is the clear favourite. “I don’t know if Instagram is the platform, but it’s definitely the most popular social media platform to be on now, and it’s obvious the superyacht industry is starting to catch on. I see brokers and other industry professionals starting yacht feeds to push their products – everything from yachts to anchors.

“Instagram, for me, is where it all started. Sharing posts and seeing the interaction between followers keeps it interesting. The other platforms have tuned their sites to try and keep up bit it’s not the same.”

"Choosing photos is fun and it definitely takes some work."

But there’s still a long way to go. “When I first started using social media, it was a big joke, but now it’s taken a lot more seriously. But the industry still has the tables turned, spending more on print than on social media. If done correctly, social media will attract more than three times the readership.”

We all follow TheYachtGuy (and if you don’t, you should be), but what really makes a good photo? In the words of the man himself: “Clarity, colour and perspective are what I look for when I finally choose. Choosing photos is fun and it definitely takes some work. Making sure there’s a name that goes with the photos is the first thing. I’ll post an occasional generic shot but I prefer to use amateur photos.”

And one final word of advice from TheYachtGuy: “It seems like it’s been a mad dash to the front [of social media] from everyone. Which is good. If you want to survive in any industry, being able to adapt to the times is key.”

TheYachtGuy

Favourite yachts : “ Esther III , Cakewalk and the new Kometa , launching February 2016. But if I had to choose just one it would have to be High Power III (ex- Numptia ). She’s the perfect size and though she’s a few years old I still love her design both in and out.”

Funniest thing someone’s asked you to promote on Instagram? “A news feed that focused on women’s backsides. I had to decline.”

Favourite photo of the past month : Photo of Eclipse in Croatia by  @fjaka

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The Lonely Life of a Yacht Influencer

Alex Jimenez (aka TheYachtGuy) might look like he’s comfortably residing in the lap of luxury on Instagram, but the truth is, he’s kinda lost at sea

While chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched intoxicated rich people having expensive fun in their cheap white shower slippers — first rule of yacht club is there are no shoes on the yacht, which are instead piled in a big heap at the yacht’s entrance — I began to wonder, “How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?”

Then, almost on cue, seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted a dude who had, in fact, spent his entire life doing this. Alex Jimenez was a professional yacht influencer, and he was hard at work.

View this post on Instagram Exploring the world on a yacht ? Still working on it. 😉 Photo by @memoriesnotincluded A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Oct 24, 2018 at 2:12am PDT

I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I just saw an open chair next to a lanky guy wearing a loose polo shirt and a flat-brimmed Yankees hat, and sat down in it. As everyone else gradually made their way toward the raucous festivities taking place on the foredeck, Jimenez struck up a conversation with me. He remarked that I seemed both thoughtful and decidedly out of place.

“I’m working,” I said. “I never stop working. All I can think about is work.”

“Hey, me too,” he replied. “I’m working right now.”

“I used to feel all messed up about my career,” he continued. “I was a short-haul truck driver in the Bronx, and I guess I caught the yacht bug. I’d go to a bookstore, grab a table and read everything I could about yachts. Then, on the very first weekend after I downloaded the Instagram app, right after Instagram became a thing you could download, I went to a luxury boat show and took some of pictures of the yachts. I added some hashtags, and pretty soon I had 800,000 followers. But the quantity doesn’t really matter to the folks who pay me, it’s the quality. Influential people follow me, Gulf state princes and Russian moguls who might actually be able to buy these yachts.”

Wait, what?

When Jimenez said that he was working, I assumed he was “working” the same way Lindsay Lohan was — that is, “working the crowd.” He looked important enough, wearing an expensive, custom-made watch with all of the wheels, ratchets and levers exposed.

“Nah, I’m nobody you’d know,” he assured me. “I’m here to take some pictures and post some video stories of the yacht, which a brokerage group is trying to sell. The watch is a loaner from a friend. I wear it, take a picture of my wrist and tag his company on my Instagram account. It’s just a small part of the hustle.”

The yacht hustle, I soon learned, was the all-consuming passion of Jimenez’s life. He went from a guy who took Instagram pictures, always head-on yacht shots run through one of the generic filters, to a guy that yacht brokers paid to stay on their yachts in order to mention that said yachts were docked in a port and available for sale or charter. He was helicoptered from yacht to yacht, and slept in the smallest guest cabins.

View this post on Instagram A walk through aboard one of this decades most iconic yachts. “SAVANNAH” 83.5m / 274ft built by @feadship and designed by #cgdesign. Photos via @boatinternational check out their site for the full article by Marilyn Mower A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Sep 9, 2018 at 8:52am PDT

“The yacht we’re on right now used to be a cruise ship that they retrofitted,” he told me. “You can sleep a dozen or more people on here, and the decks can fit a bunch more, but it’s all kind of crowded.”

I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul.

“Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.”

View this post on Instagram Around $55 million gets you one of the above. Which would you choose? A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Oct 22, 2018 at 8:31am PDT

We took a walk around the yacht while people boozed and bumped into each other, their words slurring together and distorted further by the deep bass thump of the music playing from the upper and lower decks. Jimenez’s own cabin was indeed tiny, very nearly a capsule hotel. He showed me the heavy-duty metal suitcase where he secured his borrowed valuables, a collection of watches on loan from various business acquaintances.

“The watches are heavy on the wrist,” he said. “They’re great to look at, but their bands often cut into the wrist. And yeah, the room is small, but with my nocturnal schedule, it’s not like I sleep very much. I take maybe one picture a day and post a few Instagram stories, but I’m expected to be up on the deck, mingling with partygoers and selling the mystique of the yacht.”

View this post on Instagram For Good Karma Rock @wristkarma www.wristkarma.com A post shared by Alex Jimenez (@theyachtguy) on Jun 22, 2018 at 6:08pm PDT

Jimenez leveled with me — once upon a time, he had been excited by the idea of partying on a yacht. After all, who wouldn’t be? But now he was basically just a working stiff. He too had a home and a family, with kids he didn’t see as much as he could because his “feet were never on dry land.”

He had considerable yacht expertise and knew all the major players in the yacht world, buyers and sellers and their glorious boats. He had been on the 100-foot yachts and the 500-foot yachts, and seen yacht-related activities he assured me exceeded any fantasies, dark or light, that I could ever imagine. Yet all that meant he was now just another yacht worker, someone who punched the clock — or the pearl-faced wristwatch, in his case — the same as the kitchen staff, the bartenders and the yacht’s crew.

View this post on Instagram Here's me and Lindsey Lohan A post shared by Ralph Moffettone (@ralphmoffettone) on May 20, 2017 at 12:13pm PDT

“You’ve seen the crew,” he told me. “It’s about 30 people on this yacht, and they’re Greek and serious as a heart attack. Nine times out of ten, the crews on these yachts are either Greek or Russian. The rich people that staff these yachts talk at length about whether it’s better to go with one or the other. They can make pretty decent money, and on a 500-footer with a 60 or 70 person crew, you’re probably talking $5,000 or $6,000 a month plus room and board.”

After years of yacht influence, the true appeal of high-class maritime life had become clear to Jimenez. “You have to be really rich to own one of these,” he said. “I mean, you have to be so rich to own a yacht that’s 300 feet or more. You can’t be rich like LeBron James, because that’s nothing. You can’t be rich like Tiger Woods or Johnny Depp. They’re not rich in super-yacht terms. We’re talking 10 percent or more of the purchase cost of the yacht paid out in upkeep every month. The brokerages and buying groups can swing it because there’s a bunch of investors, and because they charter the yachts to offset costs.

“But for the guy who owns the Eclipse [ Roman Abramovich , a Russian oligarch], that’s not the point. He’s not chartering that thing out. It has a submarine and a missile detection system. See, the power of owning a magnificent yacht like that is in how you’re telling the world that you’re beyond buying and selling. You have more money than there is money to have. You’ve transcended. There are no frontiers left for you on dry land. I mean, true peace is only at sea .”

Jimenez, a poor Puerto Rican kid, grew up hustling. He worked 50- and 60-hour shifts at whatever job he had; he considered overtime to be a necessary part of his base pay and counts himself among those annoying grinders who dismiss 40 hours of work per week as a “ part-time job .” He now made a “comfortable middle-class living,” but sitting there with me in the cabin, fretted that it could go away at any time. “This is me working a little network I’ve built using someone else’s social media platform,” he said. “If Instagram changes its algorithm slightly, there goes a bit of my business. If Instagram disconnects some of the tools I use to build and monitor my account, there goes a bit of my business. And if Instagram goes away and is replaced by something newer and better, I need to get there first, just like I did with this account. If I don’t, I’m done. I’m totally dependent on a platform that’s completely out-of-control.”

For Jimenez, Instagram is essentially a money tree that must be fertilized and harvested as much as possible before its popularity wanes. As another side hustle, he “plants” subsidiary yacht accounts, accounts with soundalike names and images, and uses cross-promotion from his primary account to grow them until they’re large enough to sell to yacht brokers or manufacturers. “I build them up and then sell them off, and my client gets a ready-made account that has real followers and legitimate engagement,” he told me. “I started focusing on that when I realized that this wasn’t just a ‘life of the party’ job, that pushing social media is something you do all day and all night long.

“I fire off these posts while I’m sitting around on the yacht, when things are very slow. I’m not in this for the fun of it, I’m not posting silly stuff. I basically do sponsored advertisements that follow a set format. I watch Instagram like a hawk to see if anything is hampering the growth of these other accounts, and to see if I’m continuing to get the activity I need on my primary posts.”

After surveying his cabin, Jimenez and I walked to the side deck and slouched over the railing. The sun had set, and we studied the well-lit coastline of Cannes . “If you could have anything at all, anything in the world, what would you want?” he asked me.

“I guess I’d want to keep writing and keep getting paid for it,” I responded.

“Well, I want to own a yacht,” Jimenez said. “I used to just want to be on yachts, because I thought the parties were cool and the technology was awesome, but now that I’ve spent a good portion of my life partying on them, I actually want to own a yacht. Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you’ve somehow freed yourself from work and want. If you own the yacht that way, you’re a free man. The hustle and grind are things of the past.”

I asked him if he had plans to leave the yacht while we were in the French Riviera.

“No, I’m going to hang back here, because I’m scheduled to be on another one of these yachts tomorrow,” he said. “I know pretty much every boat in this harbor — owners, captains, specifications. People say, ‘Alex, you’re on yachts all day — that’s the life.’ Well, for me, it’s not the life, it’s my life. It’s not some permanent summer or year-long vacation. It’s my living. I help rich people and rich companies advertise their yachts. I’ve got all this knowledge that I gained when I loved yachts so much that I’d spend all weekend studying them for free, and now, I sell my knowledge to people. I sell that know-how all day long, and everything I know is worth something. I’m always on the clock, always tracking my time on these expensive wristwatches with the big clock faces. And so, I’m sure to never set foot on dry land when I’m working.”

Oliver Lee Bateman

Oliver Bateman is a contributing writer to MEL Magazine. He writes about the extreme sides of fitness, the weirder sides of MMA and pro wrestling, and the unorthodox lifestyles of professional athletes. His writing on these topics has appeared in publications such as the Paris Review, the Atlantic, and the New Republic. Ever since he was a little kid, he's been really good at exercising.

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Who was onboard tech mogul Mike Lynch's Bayesian yacht?

Topic: Disasters, Accidents and Emergency Incidents

Six people are missing, including a man dubbed the British Bill Gates, after a luxury yacht sank off the Sicilian coast.

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch — freshly acquitted from a decade-long trial — had invited his work colleagues aboard a trip through the Mediterranean coast when a freak storm saw the yacht sink within moments.

Fifteen people escaped from the sinking vessel. The search for the missing continues.

Here's what we know so far: 

What happened?

The Italian coastguard said the yacht — the Bayesian — was anchored off the shore of port city Porticello, near the Sicilian capital Palermo, when it was hit by bad weather sometime after 4am on Monday, local time. 

Eyewitnesses said it vanished quickly beneath the waves shortly before dawn.

Managers of the sailing vessel Bayesian, Camper & Nicholsons, confirmed to the ABC that the Bayesian encountered severe weather and subsequently sank. 

"Our priority is assisting with the ongoing search and providing all necessary support to the rescued passengers and crew," they said. 

"The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude," a coastguard official told Reuters.

Sicily's civil protection agency head, Salvo Cocina, said a waterspout — a tornado over the water — could have struck the yacht.

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Mr Cocina added. 

Storms and heavy rainfall had swept down Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat, lifting the temperature of the Mediterranean Sea to record levels and raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts told Reuters.

"The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius, which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms," meteorologist Luca Mercalli said.

Rescuers recover the body of one of the people aboard the Bayesian.  ( AP: Lucio Ganci )

Captain Karsten Borner of the Sir Robert Baden Powell vessel told journalists he noticed the Bayesian nearby during the storm, but after it calmed he saw a red flare and realised the ship had simply disappeared.

Mr Borner said he and a crew member boarded their tender and found a lifeboat with 15 people, some of them injured, who they then took aboard and alerted the coast guard.

Search crews, including helicopters and divers, are continuing to search the wreckage, lying at a depth of 49 metres.

Specialist divers reached the ship on Monday but access was limited due to objects in the way, the fire brigade said.

The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch is deploying a team of four inspectors to Italy to conduct a preliminary assessment.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development office said it was "providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families".

Sicilian prosecutors have also opened an investigation into the event. 

Who is missing?

Lawyer Chris Morvillo (left), entrepreneur Mike Lynch, and Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer are among the missing. 

There were 12 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the yacht. 

Mr Cocina said the crew and passengers hailed from a variety of countries, including Britain, the United States, Antigua, France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.

Of the 22, one man is confirmed dead and another six people are still missing. 

They are believed to be inside the hull, fire rescue spokesperson Luca Cari said.

Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman who said he responded to a flare from the vessel but found it sunk, said he stayed at the site for three hours without finding anyone.

"I think they are inside, all the missing people," he said.

Rescue teams recovered the body of the yacht's onboard chef on Monday, identified as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.

The still missing people include: 

• Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Hannah 
• Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of global financial services company Morgan Stanley International
• Chris Morvillo , a lawyer at the British multinational law firm Clifford Chance. He worked on Mr Lynch's lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard
• The identities of the remaining two missing are still unconfirmed

Who was rescued? 

Fifteen people escaped from the sinking ship. 

Eight have been hospitalised and others were taken to a nearby hotel.

Charlotte Golunski was among those rescued, recalling the harrowing moments she held her child Sofia above the waves.  ( Supplied: Facebook  )

Among those rescued were:

• Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who was the owner of the yacht
• Charlotte Golunski and her one-year-old daughter, Sofia. Ms Golunski is a partner at Mr Lynch's firm, Invoke Capital. She says she momentarily lost hold of Sofia in the water but managed to hold her up above the waves until the lifeboat was inflated
• Ms Golunski's husband James Emslie
• New Zealand captain of the yacht James Catfield. He told Italian newspaper La Repubblica the crew didn't see the storm coming
• A lone Dutch citizen was identified by the Dutch foreign ministry as being rescued, but was not identified

Who is Mike Lynch?

Mr Lynch, once hailed as Britain’s king of technology, was recently freed from a Silicon Valley lawsuit that tarnished his legacy. 

The 59-year-old Cambridge-educated mathematician created Autonomy , a search engine that could pore through emails and other internal business documents to help companies find vital information more quickly. 

He received the OBE for his innovation in 2006. 

He then sold the software to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $US11 billion ($16 billion) in 2011, with Mr Lynch personally netting $US800 million. 

HP valued Autonomy at $US46 billion ($68 billion) in the months leading up to the deal.

Mike Lynch in 2019 leaving the High Court in London.  ( Reuters: Henry Nicholls/File Photo )

But the deal quickly turned sour after he was accused of forging the software's financial records to make the sale.

As part of a decades-long legal battle against HP, Mr Lynch was extradited to the UK on criminal fraud charges. 

He steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP's own bungling. 

He was eventually cleared of all charges in June this year. 

Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced a bill from a civil case in London that HP mostly won during 2022. Damages haven't been determined in that case, but HP is seeking $US4 billion. 

Following the San Francisco trial, Mr Lynch said he would return to the UK and do what he loved most: "[being with] my family and innovating in my field."

The holiday appeared to be something of a celebration after Mr Lynch's acquittal, with guests including some of the people who had stood by Lynch throughout the ordeal.

This picture shows the rescue operations off the Sicilian coast.  ( AP: Italian Coast Guard  )

In a separate act of tragedy, Mr Lynch's co-defendant in the trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died on Monday, after a road accident left him critically injured.

Mr Chamberlain — Autonomy's former vice-president of finance alongside Mr Lynch — was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning and had been placed on life support. 

What is the Bayesian?

The luxury yacht is 56m long sailboat, with a 75m mast labelled as the tallest aluminium mast in the world.

It was previously named Salute when it flew under a Dutch flag.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites and a crew of 10, according to online specialist yacht sites. It was last refitted in 2020.

Online charter sites listed it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $AU 321,000) a week. 

This picture taken on Sunday shows the Bayesian (left) and the Duch sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell anchored off the coast line.   ( AP: Fabio La Bianca/Baia Santa Nicolicchia )

The ship also won a string of awards for its design. 

Ms Golunski said the yacht had travelled through the Aeolian Islands, Milazzo and Cefalù before sinking. 

It is likely the yacht's name would resonate with Mr Lynch because his PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune was based on Bayesian theory.

Five bodies found inside superyacht that sank off Sicily

PORTICELLO, Sicily — Divers recovered four bodies Wednesday from inside a superyacht that sank in a sudden storm off Sicily , Salvatore Cocina, director of the island's Civil Protection Agency, confirmed to NBC News.

Cocina later confirmed to Sky News that a fifth body had been found and was being brought to shore. One passenger remains missing.

The identities of the bodies were not immediately released. Their recovery follows a dayslong search in the deep waters off Italy where British tech tycoon Mike Lynch  and several others were believed to be trapped in the hull. Fifteen of the 22 people aboard survived.

The rest had been missing since early Monday, when the Bayesian was caught in the storm anchored off the coast of Porticello, a village near the Sicilian capital city, Palermo.

The body of the ship’s cook, identified as Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian Antiguan national, was recovered Monday. 

On Wednesday, NBC News witnessed what appeared to be at least three body bags being lifted from fire department boats after they pulled into port at Porticello. It was unclear whose bodies they were. Some were later transferred to ambulances and driven away from the dock.

Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda, are also missing. 

The Bayesian is owned by a firm linked to Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who was among the survivors rescued by a nearby vessel after they got into a lifeboat.

Built by the Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi in 2008, the U.K.-registered yacht could carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist boating sites. Its nearly 250-foot mast is the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to CharterWorld Luxury Yacht Charters.  

Regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” Lynch was  acquitted of fraud by a San Francisco jury this year, stemming from the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.

The Mediterranean sailing vacation was designed to be a celebration for Lynch, who brought Bloomer, who testified in his defense, and Morvillo, one of his U.S. lawyers, on the trip.

Lynch's co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was not aboard the Bayesian, but in what appears to be a tragic coincidence, a  car struck and killed  him Saturday as he was jogging in a village about 68 miles north of London, local police said.

Claudio Lavanga and Claudia Rizzo reported from Porticello. Henry Austin reported from London.

Claudio Lavanga is Rome-based foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Claudia Rizzo is an Italy based journalist.

Henry Austin is a senior editor for NBC News Digital based in London.

Watch CBS News

5th body recovered from Mike Lynch's family yacht off Sicily as questions mount over luxury vessel's sinking

By Anna Matranga

Updated on: August 22, 2024 / 10:48 AM EDT / CBS News

Rome — Divers recovered the body of a fifth victim of the Bayesian superyacht wreck Thursday morning, Sicily Civil Protection Chief Salvo Cocina confirmed to CBS News, and the Reuters news agency cited Italian Interior Ministry official Massimo Mariani as saying it was the body of Mike Lynch, the British tech magnate whose wife owned the vessel.

Italian Coast Guard spokesperson Vincenzo Zagarola told CBS News that teams were still working to recover the body of the sixth and final person left missing when the boat went down. The six bodies had remained stuck inside the 184-foot luxury yacht for days after it sank early Monday morning off the coast of Palermo, Sicily in a severe thunderstorm.

Four bodies were retrieved Wednesday from the Bayesian, which was resting on the seafloor at a 90 degree angle at a depth of over 160 feet. The vessel's position and items that moved around inside the ill-fated yacht made recovery efforts slow and hazardous.

Italian authorities have not officially identified the remains recovered from the Bayesian, which belonged to Lynch's wife Angela Bacares. She was among the 15 people who managed to escape from the boat as it sank quickly on Monday morning, but Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among those left missing.

Another victim, the Bayesian superyacht's chef, was found dead soon after the boat capsized. 

Along with Lynch and his daughter, the technology mogul's American lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, and British banker Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, were believed to have been trapped in the yacht when it sank.

Questions as to how the state-of-the-art boat could have gone down so quickly have mounted steadily since the accident. 

Italian media were reporting Thursday that, after questioning survivors and witnesses, Italian prosecutors had opened an official investigation into a possible "culpable shipwreck." No individuals had been named as potential suspects.

On Thursday, Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian Sea Group, which owns the company Perini Navi, which built the Bayesian in 2008, blamed human error.

"A Perini ship resisted Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 [hurricane]. Does it seem to you that it can't resist a tornado from here?" he remarked to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. "It is good practice when the ship is at anchor to have a guard on the bridge, and if there was one he could not have failed to see the storm coming. Instead, it took on water with the guests still in the cabin. ... They ended up in a trap, those poor people ended up like mice."

One possible factor could have been that the ship's keel — a fin-like structure that sticks out from the bottom of the boat, designed to provide stability and counterweight to the huge mast — was not fully deployed. The yacht had a retractable keel that could be raised for entry into shallow harbors. But a raised keel at sea would have made the ship much more vulnerable to instability in the strong winds that struck early Monday morning.

When asked whether divers had seen the ship's keel in a raised position, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard told CBS News that only the prosecutor investigating the incident could confirm such information but that the Coast Guard "was not denying" it. 

The ship's captain, 51-year-old New Zealand national James Cutfileld, was questioned for two hours by prosecutors on Thursday, according to Italian media.

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Tech tycoon Mike Lynch among the dead in superyacht wreck off the Italian coast

• The British billionaire Mike Lynch was among those who died in a superyacht sinking off Sicily's coast.
• Lynch, a cofounder of Autonomy, was recently acquitted in a decadelong fraud case with HP.
• Another body was found on Friday, per local media, bringing the death toll to 7.

The British billionaire and tech tycoon Mike Lynch was among the dead in the sinking of the superyacht he was vacationing on near Sicily.

Lynch's body was among those taken from the yacht on Thursday morning.

Italian Coastguard told Sky News divers have discovered another body from the superyacht on Friday, the last of six people missing.

Authorities haven't confirmed whose body it was.

The 183-foot ship Bayesian was carrying 22 total passengers and crew, most of whom survived.

Among the missing were Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda; and Morgan Stanley International's chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife, Judy.

Fifteen people were rescued, including Mike Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares .

Italian authorities are investigating the cause of the sinking.

Brent Hoberman, a British entrepreneur and friend of Lynch's, told Sky News that his death was "unbelievably tragic."

"We were all hoping for a miracle — we knew it was unlikely, but you still hold out hope," Hoberman said.

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He called Lynch an "inspiring figure" in the tech community and said he should be remembered for his accomplishments.

Lynch, 59, was a former UK government advisor who founded the British software company Autonomy in 1996. By 2011, the company was so successful that Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy it for $11 billion.

But in 2012, HP alleged that $5 billion of that acquisition was due to "accounting irregularities" that caused HP to dramatically overpay.

A decadelong legal battle culminated last year when Lynch was extradited to the US on charges that he had committed fraud by falsely inflating the value of his company.

In June this year, a San Francisco jury acquitted Lynch, who had maintained his innocence from the beginning.

"It's just so unbelievably tragic for him to go through what he went through over the last 12 years, defending his name and not really living a full life, to now for his death to be confirmed is obviously incredibly sad," Hoberman told Sky News.

Danny Fortson, a journalist at The Sunday Times, was the first person to interview Lynch after his acquittal for a story published in late July .

Fortson told Business Insider that Lynch was excited for a chance at a second life after spending more than a decade caught up worrying about whether he'd go to prison.

"He struck me as somebody who was really reeling from his situation," Fortson said. "I think he was a little bit still in shock because he had been under this cloud for so long, and the consequences were so grave if he lost. I think he was really at a little bit at a loss of trying to figure out what to do with himself, how to feel, struggling with his emotions."

Fortson added: "I think his first order of business was to do nothing, to try to make up for lost time. And I think that's what this boat trip was about, very sadly."

On Saturday — two days before the shipwreck — Lynch's codefendant in the US fraud cause, Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car while jogging and killed.

"It's almost like a Greek tragedy, what has happened to him and Chamberlain in the past few days," Richard Holway MBE, an IT analyst and friend of Lynch, told BI.

Holway also reflected on Lynch's legacy as a boss and entrepreneur.

"Even though people say that perhaps he was a hard person to work for, I think people actually liked somebody who can be tough and hard and make sure that things get done. And I think he was one of those people," Holway said, adding that Lynch liked loyalty and always repaid it.

Another friend of Lynch, Common Current CEO Warren Karlenzig who knew Lynch in the '90s, told BI that Lynch enjoyed coming over from England and hanging out at Karlenzig's offices.

"He would like to just shoot the breeze about Bayesian logic, which Autonomy was based off of, and Thomas Bayes," Karlenzig said, adding that Bayes, who was Lynch's hero, also died at age 59.

"I saw the HP buyout and all the controversy with that, and I was questioning, 'Is that the same person?' because he looked so different from the superenergetic, alternative-looking guy with longer hair and a goatee," Karlenzig said of Lynch.

He added that people in Silicon Valley "are shocked that this tragedy happened and that such wealth could not buy security."

In the weeks following his acquittal, Lynch told Fortson that he had grown more spiritual and was considering what he called "Saint Peter questions" about heaven and hell and what it all means.

"I'd had to say goodbye to everything and everyone because I didn't know if I'd ever be coming back," Lynch told Fortson for The Sunday Times. "If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of life as I have known it in any sense."

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Search Resumes for British Mogul and 5 Others After Yacht Sinks Off Sicily

The body of the vessel’s cook was recovered while divers searched the hull of the Bayesian for passengers, including the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch.

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By Elisabetta Povoledo

Deep-sea divers with Italy’s firefighter corps resumed their search on Tuesday for six missing passengers — including a British software mogul and his daughter — of a yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily the previous day.

Twenty-two people were on board the 180-foot British-flagged sailing yacht, the Bayesian, which was anchored near the port of Porticello, when it was hit by what witnesses described as a waterspout, a small tornado on water, during a sudden and violent storm.

Fifteen people who managed to get to a raft were rescued by the captain of a nearby sailing cruise ship. The body of the yacht’s cook, identified by news outlets as Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian Antiguan, was recovered on Monday. But several people are still unaccounted for, according to Salvatore Cocina, an official with Sicily’s civil protection agency.

Those still missing are Mike Lynch, a British technology entrepreneur; his daughter Hannah; Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Christopher J. Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.

Mr. Lynch was acquitted of fraud in a U.S. trial in June, ending a high-profile, decadelong legal battle against accusations that he had defrauded Hewlett-Packard when he sold his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett for $11 billion.

Mr. Lynch and the others went missing days after Mr. Lynch’s co-defendant at the fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Autonomy, was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out for a run, his lawyer, Gary S. Lincenberg, said in a statement.

Prosecutors in the Italian city of Termini Imerese, east of where the yacht sank, are opening a formal investigation into the yacht’s sinking. Reached by telephone, the chief prosecutor declined to comment.

The search for the missing passengers began on Monday but was suspended late that night as crews found themselves limited to the bridge deck and items like furnishings “obstructing passage,” the firefighters’ corps wrote on social media .

When divers resumed the search on Tuesday, ships trawled the waters near the site, the corps said in a statement. The Italian Coast Guard also said in a statement that search operations were “continuing unabated,” with the deployment of helicopters. There was no evidence that gasoline was leaking from the yacht, the Coast Guard said.

The yacht was lying on its right side in about 165 feet of water, meaning that divers, working in pairs, could stay underwater for only about 12 minutes at a time, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for the firefighters’ corps.

Divers were seeking a safe point of access to the vessel’s cabins. “Obviously, everything fell and the space is very tight,” Mr. Cari said, adding that the divers were having to remove obstacles, like furnishings and electrical wiring, that were “completely blocking passages.”

The firefighters’ corps said in a statement that it was impossible to verify whether people were inside the hull.

Mr. Cari said that several divers had been part of the search-and-rescue operations when the Costa Concordia, a cruise liner, capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio in 2012, killing 32 people. It is considered one of the worst maritime disasters in modern Italian history.

“It’s like the Costa Concordia, but much smaller,” Mr. Cari said in a telephone interview, comparing the search operations. “In the Costa Concordia, we came across many obstacles but we somehow were able to overcome them. Here, the obstacles block the passages and have to be removed.” He added, “This makes it more difficult.”

Crews were also trying to raise the yacht, which experts will examine to try to determine why it sank. Until then, experts can only hypothesize what happened.

Karsten Borner, the captain of a ship, the Sir Robert Baden Powell, which picked up the Bayesian’s 15 survivors, said in an interview that when the wind picked up around 4 a.m. Monday, the Bayesian was about 490 feet behind his vessel. Once the wind wound down, he said, he could not see the yacht anymore.

“My theory was that she was capsized first and then went down over the stern,” Mr. Borner said.

Dario Boote, a ship structures and naval architecture professor at the University of Genoa, said: “Now I imagine that a whole series of lawsuits will be triggered, obviously to ascertain whether there is any responsibility, as always happens very unpleasantly in these situations.” He said, however, that in this case, responsibility might be hard to determine. “Clearly, only once the wreck is raised will we know more,” he added.

Several fishermen told Italian news outlets that they had witnessed a waterspout. Peter Inness, a meteorologist at the University of Reading, said they were relatively common in the Mediterranean, though their occurrence and intensity are unpredictable.

“Until one actually forms, you can’t start telling people where it is,” Mr. Inness said, or “how to get out of the way.”

The inclement weather — with lightning intermittently streaking through the sky — made it hard to know exactly why the yacht sank. Col. Attilio Di Diodato, director of the Italian Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology, said the agency had registered intense lightning activity and strong gusts of wind in the area at the time the boat sank.

The Bayesian had one of the tallest aluminum masts in the world, according to its builder, Perini Navi. “Having a tall aluminum mast would not make it the safest port to be in case of a storm,” said Andrea Ratti, associate professor of nautical design and architecture technology the Politecnico di Milano. The type of intensity unleashed by a violent lightning storm “could have created a significant shock wave,” he added.

He, too, cautioned that “a lot of questions will remain until we have other elements at our disposal.”

Modern yachts are built to withstand meteorological events of reasonable intensity, and all international naval registers suggest that new ships be designed for higher waves and more frequent and extreme weather events.

But “this seems a case of an unreasonable extreme event,” said Emilio Fortunato Campana, an expert in Naval Hydrodynamics at Italy’s National Research Council. “In that case, no ship is 100 percent safe,” he added. “I think the Titanic showed that nothing is unsinkable.”

Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo

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Missing Tech Tycoon Mike Lynch's Business Partner Dies After Being Hit by a Car Days Before Yacht Sinking: Police

Lynch's former business partner and co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was struck by a car on Aug. 17, and police announced that he'd died three days later

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The co-defendant of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch , who is still missing amid a superyacht sinking in Sicily , has died after being struck by a car, police have confirmed.

Stephen "Steve" Chamberlain, 52, died in the hospital after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England, on Saturday, Aug. 17 authorities said in a statement on Tuesday, Aug. 20. Local police are now investigating his death as they are seeking witnesses to the incident.

Authorities previously reported that a pedestrian in his 50s had been “seriously injured” in the collision, which happened at around 10:10 a.m. on Saturday. The driver of the car was confirmed to be a 49-year-old woman who “remained at the scene.”

The Guardian reports that Chamberlain was out for a run at the time he was hit, citing his attorney Gary Lincenberg.

Cambridgeshire police shared a statement from Chamberlain’s family in tribute: “Steve was a much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend. He was an amazing individual whose only goal in life was to help others in any way possible. ... He will be deeply missed but forever in the hearts of his loved ones.”

HANDOUT/Cambridgeshire Police/AFP via Getty

Chamberlain was the co-defendant of Lynch in a U.S. trial over his tech company Autonomy. He was accused of fraud and conspiracy over allegedly inflating the company's earnings with Lynch ahead of an $11 billion deal with Hewlett-Packard, per The Times ,  TechCrunch  and the  Associated Press .

The former business partners were both acquitted of all 15 charges in June by a San Francisco jury.

Following Chamberlain's death, his attorney Lincenberg described him as "a courageous man with unparalleled integrity."

"We deeply miss him," Lincenberg said, according to the BBC . "Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family."

Lynch remains missing along with his daughter Hannah and four others after the yacht they were aboard sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday, Aug. 19, following a serious storm, PEOPLE previously reported.

Dominic Lipinski/PA Images via Getty

The Italian Coast Guard said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE that the Bayesian , a 183-ft. yacht flying the U.K. flag, sank near Porticello around 5 a.m., local time on Monday after a "violent storm."

Twenty-two people were on the vessel at the time, including 10 crew and 12 passengers, authorities said.

Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among the 15 people rescued, PEOPLE reported. Six additional people — including two Americans and four British citizens — remain missing, the coast guard and local sources said.

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A spokesperson for Sicily's civil protection agency, Francesco Venuto, previously told the BBC that authorities believe the missing are trapped in the yacht.

"We've been searching all day with helicopters and boats. We've found nothing,” said Venuto. “That wouldn't make sense; in these conditions, we should have found something by now.”

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