The captain of the My Nirvana yacht, which sank following a fire last Sunday, looked on as two large cranes started the work to refloat it in Puerto Portals on Friday. Divers assisted with the effort to refloat the 100 tonne yacht, the stern being the first to be raised by two enormous pulleys.
The fire started around quarter past six. The captain was called at his home in Porto Pi and went to see the yacht in flames. "I saw it born, and I saw it die," he observed. A short circuit in the engine room or stern had caused the fire, which devastated the whole yacht. There was no one on board at the time.
The yacht belongs to a 70-year-old Briton, whose family used it as a second residence between May and October, journeying around the Balearics. It was built in Dubai in 2008 and delivered by container ship to Livorno in Italy. The captain brought it from Tuscany to Majorca. Inside the yacht were two forty-centimetre-high carved wooden Buddhas. The family, the captain noted, are "very spiritual".