On the evening of Tuesday 11 August a 29.6-metre motor yacht called Angiola II rolled onto her side and sank off Porto Cervo, in the middle of the Costa Smeralda season. Fourteen people were aboard, guests and crew, and every one of them came out of it unhurt.
Most of what the international press then wrote about the boat was wrong. Headlines around the world ran a brand-new superyacht that sank four days after being handed to her owner. She was six years old.
Three hours off Capo Ferro
The yacht went down between Isola dei Cappuccini and Capo Ferro, in the stretch of water linking Poltu Quatu to Porto Cervo. The exact hour has not been published anywhere, and even the date is muddled — some Italian outlets say 12 August, which is when the first agency reports were filed. What is consistent across the coverage is the evening of Tuesday the 11th.
Twelve of the fourteen were taken off by boats that happened to be passing. In August that stretch is crowded, and the footage that spread worldwide was shot from tenders sitting a few dozen metres away. The owner and one acquaintance stayed aboard until the La Maddalena coastguard reached them with the patrol boat CP 870. Everyone was landed at Poltu Quatu, and the whole operation ran about three hours.
What she was
Angiola II was an Amer F100, launched in 2020 at Sanremo by Permare, the yard that sells under the Amer Yachts name. She flew the Maltese flag, and she is one of the boats behind the yard's case for quad IPS on a 30-metre hull: four Volvo Penta pods instead of two conventional shaft lines. Italian reporting puts her value at around eight million euros, though a listing price of 4.5 million has also been quoted.
The yard's correction
Two days after the sinking, Permare issued a note about the ownership history. On causes it said nothing, because nobody knows them yet. Barbara Amerio, co-CEO of Amer Yachts, was blunt.
Barbara Amerio, co-CEO, Amer Yachts:“This is a used boat, launched in 2020, which has changed hands several times; the last sale, between private parties, went through brokers outside the yard. We looked after her maintenance for as long as she remained under warranty. Like everyone else, we are relieved that passengers and crew are safe, and like everyone else we are waiting for the official findings.
”
The record, as it stands: launched in 2020, several owners since, a refit at a yard in Tuscany that finished with a relaunch in April 2026, and a private sale closed on 4 August through outside brokers. Physical handover followed roughly four days before the sinking. Permare had no part in the refit and no part in the sale.
Nobody has said why yet
There is no official cause. The prosecutor's office in Tempio Pausania has opened an investigation, and the La Maddalena harbourmaster is running the administrative side.
The working reconstruction that reached the press goes like this: a fault in the engine room started a fire, the fire was contained quickly, but water entered the hull and the yacht lost buoyancy and went over. Three versions have circulated locally, and all three are hypotheses rather than findings — an engine-room fire followed by flooding; a hull breach from striking a shoal; and an engine failure whose fire damaged seals. The shoal version has never been supported by an official statement and dropped out of the Italian coverage after 13 August.
Still down there
As of 19 August the yacht was still on the bottom, on her side in about seven metres of water inside the La Maddalena archipelago national park. Salvage is the owner's responsibility; he has hired a specialist contractor, and the lift is planned with a pontoon of roughly 200 tonnes capacity. Containment booms are around the hull, the area is under constant watch, and no fuel has escaped — the yard puts that down to structural tanks in the double bottom, and expects it to hold if the lift is done properly.
Why modern yachts sink
Angiola II is far from the first boat to go down soon after a handover or a refit. Dolce Vento, a 23.9-metre Turkish-built motor yacht, capsized in 2023 straight after her launch and settled in seven metres, the same depth. The Bayesian, lost off Sicily in 2024 with seven dead, is the other Italian reference point, and the contrast is worth holding onto: deep water, minutes, fatalities, a salvage that took a year.
The wider statistics point away from dramatic causes. In BoatUS insurance data on recreational craft, boats that sink while underway do so mostly from striking a submerged object (36 percent), failed underwater fittings such as seacocks and through-hulls (24 percent) and leaking drive bellows or seals (20 percent). Two thirds of all sinkings are judged preventable. The marine surveyors' institute IIMS has issued a safety alert on engine-room flooding from a shaft seal failure, and noted that a traditional stuffing box leaks gradually when it fails, while a modern patented seal can let go all at once.
Which of those applies here is for Tempio Pausania to establish. Until it does, the hard facts are still the ones from that first evening: seven metres of water, one boat on her side, and fourteen people who all got home.
Photo: Capitaneria di Porto di La Maddalena / ANSA.
