A submersible will dive down onto the wreck of the sunken superyacht Bayesian this week in the first stage of a £20million operation to raise it.
The yacht sank in a freak storm off the fishing village of Porticello, Sicily, last August, killing seven, including British billionaire tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18.
The underwater vehicle will be the initial stage in a sequence of procedures to raise Bayesian to the surface, following the arrival of a floating crane, called Hebo Lift 10, at the Sicilian port of Termini Imerese near Palermo early yesterday morning.
Once the 184ft yacht has been checked by the mini-sub, the crane will join support vessel Hebo Lift 2 for the delicate lifting work.
Bayesian is expected to be raised by the crane from the seabed, 164ft underwater, by mid-May.
Lifting the £30million, 543-ton vessel is key to an investigation launched by Italian authorities.
They want to know why the yacht – which makers The Italian Sea Group claim was unsinkable – sank in just 16 minutes.
It will be raised after a series of slings have been threaded under the hull.
Pictured: The floating crane ships HEBO LIFT 10 and HEBO LIFT 2, which will recover the Bayesian
Pictured: Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, both from Suffolk, died after the vessel was hit by an over-sea tornado, known as a waterspout
Pictured: Bayesian, the £30million vessel, which sank last August, killing seven people
The five design flaws that caused the 543-ton yacht to sink in a freak storm off the fishing village of Porticello, Sicily
There are still 18,000 litres of fuel in the yacht’s tanks, and booms have been set up to control any spillage.
The lifting is expected to take at least eight hours.
Once out of the water, the yacht will be sailed back to Termini Imerese.
Mr Lynch, the founder of Cambridge-based software firm Autonomy, had invited a group of friends, family and associates on to the yacht to celebrate being cleared by a US jury of fraud charges that could have seen him jailed for 20 years.
