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Yacht Group International stands out as a yacht brokerage that goes beyond the ordinary, offering not only exceptional yacht brokerage services but also crafting highly customized yacht charters that encompass the full spectrum of luxury living. Our services extend to luxurious villa, private jet charters, and exotic vehicle rentals, all meticulously designed to cater to the unique needs and desires of our most discerning clients.

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At Yacht Group International, our distinctive approach sets us apart as a global luxury lifestyle company. We pride ourselves on delivering exceptional yacht brokerage services while offering a uniquely personalized experience that encompasses the entire spectrum of luxury living.

In essence, our approach as a company is defined by the art of luxury curation, where we combine unparalleled expertise in yacht brokerage with a dedication to personalization that transforms every adventure into a masterpiece of opulent living.

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Sanlorenzo group acquires nautor swan and launches hydrogen-powered america’s cup chase boats.

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American Magic's hydrogen-powered, hydrofoiling chase boat built by Bluegame is designed to be ... [+] sustainable and fast enough to keep up with the team's AC 75

Now that the Sanlorenzo Group of shipyards will be assuming total ownership of the Nautor Group over the next four years. And the Sanlorenzo Group’s Bluegame brand just delivered its first fully-foiling, all-hydrogen-powered chase boat to the New York Yacht Club American Magic America’s Cup team that’s competing for the right to challenge for the America’s Cup in Barcelona in the coming months. Saying Sanlorenzo Group President and CEO Massimo Perotti has been a “bit busy” might be a “bit of an understatement.”

Sanlorenzo Group President and CEO Massimo Perotti

But no matter how you describe it, Sanlorenzo’s acquisition of the iconic Nautor Swan sailing yacht brand (and the entire Nautor Group ) along with successfully launching a 100% emission-free powerboat that’s capable of speeds up to 50 knots and has a range of up to 180 miles, shows Perotti’s commitment to growth, innovation, and sustainability.

And as the yachting world continues to consolidate, Sanlorenzo’s acquisition of Nautor Swan makes a lot of sense.

Nautor Swan is becoming part of the San Lorenzo Group

“Today, my goal is to propel forwards a brand that is so beloved and respected and ensure its longevity by entrusting it to one of the world’s leading nautical groups, led by Massimo Perotti, one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in the marine industry,” said Nautor Group President Leonardo Ferragamo when the sale was announced. “This will enable it to reach the many and important potentials for which we have worked with passion and dedication over the years.”

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“Signing this agreement represents another milestone for our strategy,” Perotti added. “Nautor Swan’s heritage is revered worldwide for its key ingredients: elegance, quality, performance combined with solidity thanks to the advanced construction techniques, innovation and unrivalled seaworthiness.”

One of the Sanlorenzo group's shipyards

Meanwhile, another Sanlorenzo brand, Bluegame made headlines recently by successfully launching their first Bluegame Hydrogen (BGH) zero-emission, hydrogen-powered chase boat they developed and built for the New York Yacht Club American Magic team to use in the 37th edition of the America's Cup that’s just getting underway in Barcelona this week.

Bluegame developed and built the 100% hydrogen powered America's Cup chase boat was just delivered ... [+] to the American Magic team

It was designed following the strict requirements of the America's Cup Protocol to be able to fly on foils at 50 knots alongside American Magic's AC75 on the racecourse. And the use of hydrogen as the sole propulsion system marks an important milestone in sustainable technology for the entire recreational boating industry.

“From its origins, the history of Bluegame has been one of innovation and courage," Bluegame CEO Carla Demaria said at the launch. "The courage to push boundaries, to go beyond the conventional, and to challenge the impossible, as we did with the BGH. We are proud to participate in the America's Cup alongside the prestigious American Magic team, which has made history as the world's oldest active international sporting competition.”

“Choosing Bluegame for our hydrogen support boat was an easy decision for American Magic”, said American Magic President of Sailing Operations and Skipper Terry Hutchinson. “Bluegame’s cutting-edge marine technology and unwavering commitment to sustainability align perfectly with our values. Their passion for green innovation makes them an ideal partner for this groundbreaking initiative.”

Bluegame's BGH AC chase boat underway in Barcelona

Meanwhile Bluegame’s Head of Product Strategy Luca Santella just touched on how hard this project was. "The creation of the BGH involved a series of extremely complex challenges in terms of design, engineering, and materials research. For this reason, Bluegame assembled a team of exceptional competence, consisting of professionals with extensive experience in the world of the America's Cup. The efforts and significant investments in research and development to achieve the performance, speed, maneuverability, and reliability necessary to successfully support the American Magic team have been rewarded. The result is a vessel that marks a new, historic milestone in the application of cutting-edge technologies for more sustainable boating”.

In the coming weeks, Bluegame will also deliver a second BGH to the Orient Express Racing Team , America's Cup from France.

Watch this space.

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Rupert Connor President

Originally from Buckinghamshire, England, Rupert moved to the United States in 1999 after spending nine years at sea as a professional yacht captain. He logged many miles having completed multiple Atlantic and Pacific Ocean crossings and has transited both Suez and Panama canals multiple times.

In 2001 Rupert saw the opportunity to build a leading yachting services company with a focus on understanding the best crew as most problems on yachts start with personnel. With consistent, heavy investment of human and technology resources, the company naturally built four departments; crew placement, yacht management, sales and charter.

"Merging into these other areas of business is a natural fit for our clients, whether they are owners or captains. Luxury Yacht Group knows crew. It's a fluid transition to onboard accounting or payroll services, or to assist owners with the sale or purchasing of a yacht. We have become a trusted resource, and it's the reason why so many of our clients have stayed with us for so long."

When asked about the direction of the company Rupert states, "At Luxury Yacht Group we are boutique enough for personalized, quality service, and large enough for superior results."

Over the years, the company has grown to have the highest number of crew on their books having registered over 120,000 professional crew. With over 2,000 active users online per day luxyachts is the busiest crew agency in the world. Having placed more professional seafarers in the industry than any of their competitors, the company has expanded worldwide with crew coordinators in cities across every time zone.

With his extensive knowledge of the seas and dedication to quality, Rupert and Luxury Yacht Group have become the "go to" resource for industry data and statistics, trends, surveys and change initiatives.

He has managed large yachts from 80m / 36 passenger SOLAS ISM certification all the way down to 65' sport fish. He thrives on finding value for owners in an industry that trends towards indifference with regards budgets.

As an industry authority, he is often quoted by major yachting publications such as Dockwalk, The Crew Report, The Triton and Power & Motoryacht. International media continues to take an interest in the business too with coverage by CNN, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist, The New York Times, and NBC's "The Today Show."

Likewise, Rupert is invited to speak regularly on a variety of yachting topics. His previous presentations have included: Seatrade Miami, The Mariners Club, FYBA Charter Seminars, Project USA, Triton's Connection Show, Caribbean Shipping Association, and other numerous international venues. His qualifications and memberships are many:

• State of Florida Employing Yacht Broker License #4190
• Member - International Yacht Brokers Association IYBA (Former Chairperson FYBA Charter Professionals Committee)
• Former Board Member United States Superyacht Association
• Member of MENSA
• Member of USAT & USTA

Outside of the office, Rupert enjoys staying active by training for and competing in local triathlons and playing tennis. He has traveled the world to compete in events, completing Ironman Malaysia and Ironman UK. He is married with two children and lives in Fort Lauderdale.

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HanseYachts AG is the second-largest sailing yacht builder in the world in terms of the number of series-production sailing yachts built per year. The company is among the top ten manufacturers worldwide of  motorboats . More than 80% of the yachts built are sold for export. It has one of the most state-of-the-art and diverse ranges of yachts for sale, featuring over 40 different models. 

For many sailors and fans of motor yachts , purchasing their own boat is the fulfilment of a lifelong dream. HanseYachts AG allows customers to choose from an almost infinite range of options as they configure the one-of-a-kind yacht of their dreams. One thing all our sailing boats and motor boats have in common is their unmistakeable design and unwavering ‘Engineered in Germany’ seal of quality.

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What sets Shoreline Yacht Group apart is passion. Passion for boating whether it be sail or power. Our Team is made up of boaters who share a love for boating and the sea. We are sailors and power boaters with 10s of thousands of nautical miles sailing to distant shores and decades of experience at the helm. We are race instructors, captains, weekend boaters and live-aboards. We are yacht club members and mooring holders in Catalina. We know boats power and sail and we know and share the love of the sea.

Oh sure we like most brokers, we are a full service brokerage committed to personalized service and our team has over 100 years of combined experience but what makes SYG different  is our unwavering passion for the work we do and for the clients we represent. At Shoreline Yacht Group this isn’t just a job, it’s a calling.

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Divers 'open hole' in sunken superyacht - but have just 10 minutes to search for bodies

The Bayesian superyacht is still largely intact on the seabed, but the depth makes it difficult to access, and the time window divers have make searches incredibly tight.

Tuesday 20 August 2024 20:14, UK

Divers have entered the sunken superyacht as they continue to search for the bodies of six missing people, but face "significant challenges" during the rescue operation.

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are among six missing after a luxury yacht sank in a tornado off the coast of Italy. One person has already been declared dead and Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo are also among those missing.

Nick Sloane, an engineer who led the salvage operation for the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2013, says rescue divers looking for survivors have entered a "critical" 24 hours - with some possibly trapped in air pockets inside the ship, but that time is running out to save them if that is the case.

Marco Tilotta, a diver from Vigili del Fuoco di Palermo who is coordinating the search and rescue, said the teams have been diving continuously since 11.30pm last night.

He said they always hope to find people alive, but the conditions below the water are clearly "prohibitive".

When asked about the conditions that caused the boat to sink, he said: "Of our entire career as divers, however, these are events that are clearly difficult to prevent and therefore truly unlikely and difficult to manage, so I don't dare think of what the people who were there on board experienced."

The British-flagged superyacht Bayesian is still largely intact on the seabed, but the 50m depth makes it difficult to access, and the time window divers have make searches is incredibly tight, according to another diver.

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Among those diving are two cave divers, who will have experience navigating through tight areas.

'We didn't see it coming': Superyacht latest

"They can stay underwater for a maximum of 12 minutes, two of which are needed to go up and down," emergency responder Luca Cari told Italian daily Giornale Di Sicilia.

"So the real time to be able to carry out the search is 10 minutes per dive."

Mr Tilotta told reporters: "We plan... to search centimetre by centimetre."

The vessel was lying on its right side, Mr Tilotta said. Divers had not been able to determine whether the 72-metre-long mast had snapped somewhere along its length.

Divers have entered the lounge via a ladder, Mr Cari said, and are now trying to find the best access point to enter the rest of the yacht.

And Italian paper Il Messaggero said they had also been able to open a hole in the side.

Mr Cari explained that divers had identified a glass window of the Bayesian through which they could enter, though it had to be removed in order to gain access. The window is 3cm thick, making removal difficult.

From the outside it is impossible to see inside the yacht, further hampering the search.

The rescue team already searched the command bridge, which "is full of electrical cables", but did not find anyone in the area.

"The spaces inside the sailing ship are very small and if you encounter an obstacle it is very complicated to move forward, just as it is very difficult to find alternative routes," he added.

Hatches and doors left open overnight on the superyacht Bayesian may have caused it to sink in Italy, a sailing expert also said.

Sam Jefferson, editor of magazine Sailing Today, believes the vessel's huge mast would have acted like a sail to pin the boat down, and is also likely to have contributed to the deadly event.

Mr Jefferson said "I would have said that the boat got hit very hard by the wind, it was pinned over on its side.

"I imagine all the doors were open because it was hot, so there were enough hatches and doors open that it filled with water very quickly and sank like that."

Read more: Everything we know about luxury vessel sunk by tornado Lynch's co-defendant dies before yacht sinking

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Mr Lynch, known as the "British Bill Gates", has been in the headlines in recent months over a high-profile fraud case.

In June, he was cleared of all charges by a US jury related to the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

His wife, Angela Bacares, was among the 15 people already rescued.

Among others said to be missing are lawyer Christopher Morvillo, a Clifford Chance partner and Mr Lynch's co-counsel in his US trial, Mr Morvillo's wife, Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, who is also chair of UK insurer Hiscox, and his wife Judy.

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Timmerman Yachts

Timmerman Yachts is a Russian builder of quality luxury motor yachts. Based in Moscow, it is owned by a group of Dutch and Russian investors and operates out of Moscow Shipyard. Several noted naval architecture and yacht design firms are involved with Timmerman, including Vripack, Guido de Groot Design, Ginton Naval Architects, Jon Bannenberg Ltd., and Francis Design Ltd.

Founded in 2003, the company was named for 17th century Dutch boat builder Franz Timmerman who brought Dutch boat manufacturing techniques to Russia and co-founded the Russian navy. Timmerman Yachts has more than 1,000 employees working at the Moscow Shipyard.

Notable Timmerman Yachts

Timmerman has delivered a number of semi-custom luxury yachts between 26-47 metres in length, including TM26 and Timmerman FD-51, designed by Francis Design Ltd. Other notable Timmerman yachts include Victoria M, Alexandra (now Latitude) and Olsten 125'.

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One of the 10 largest yacht builders in the world, Timmerman is focused on building high-quality luxury yachts at more competitive prices. Its Russian-Dutch partnership provides great yacht-building capabilities. Timmerman builds yacht to the highest standards and holds DNV, MCA and Russian River Register certification. The company reportedly has more than a dozen yachts in some phase of construction.

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A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage

It was the kind of outlandish scheme that might bubble up in a bar around closing time.

In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream.

After all, the twin natural-gas pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe were providing billions to the Kremlin war machine. What better way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his aggression?

Just over four months later, in the small hours of Sept. 26, Scandinavian seismologists picked up signals indicating an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, near the Danish island of Bornholm. They were caused by three powerful explosions and the largest-ever recorded release of natural gas, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark.

One of the most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history, the operation worsened an energy crisis in Europe—an assault on critical infrastructure that could be considered an act of war under international law. Theories swirled about who was responsible. Was it the CIA? Could Putin himself have set the plan in motion?

Now, for the first time, the outlines of the real story can be told. The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise.

“I always laugh when I read media speculation about some huge operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” one officer who was involved in the plot said. “The whole thing was born out of a night of heavy boozing and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the guts to risk their lives for their country.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to one officer who participated and three people familiar with it. But later, when the CIA learned of it and asked the Ukrainian president to pull the plug, he ordered a halt, those people said.

Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, who was leading the effort, nonetheless forged ahead.

The Journal spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia.

Portions of their account were corroborated by a nearly two-year German police investigation into the attack, which has obtained evidence including email, mobile and satellite phones communications, as well as fingerprints and DNA samples from the alleged sabotage team. The Germany inquiry hasn’t directly linked President Zelensky to the clandestine operation.

Gen. Zaluzhniy, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, said in a text exchange that he knows nothing of any such operation and that any suggestion to the contrary is a “mere provocation.” Ukraine’s armed forces, he added, weren’t authorized to conduct overseas missions, and he therefore wouldn’t have been involved.

A senior official of the main Ukrainian intelligence service, SBU, denied his government had anything to do with the sabotage, and said that Zelensky in particular “did not approve the implementation of any such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue relevant orders.”

Putin has publicly blamed the U.S. for the attacks. A senior Russian diplomat in Berlin echoed that claim, and said the German investigation findings were “fairy tales worthy of the Brothers Grimm.”

In June, Germany’s federal prosecutor quietly issued the first arrest warrant in the case for a Ukrainian professional diving instructor for his alleged involvement in the sabotage. The German investigation is now focusing on Zaluzhniy and his aides, people familiar with the probe say, although they have no evidence that could be presented in court.

The findings could upend relations between Kyiv and Berlin, which has provided much of the financing and military equipment to Ukraine, second only to the U.S. Some German political leaders may have been willing to overlook evidence pointing to Ukraine for fear of undermining domestic support for the war effort. But German police are politically independent and their investigation took on a life of its own as they pursued one lead after another.

“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” said a senior German official familiar with the probe.

Following the May 2022 pact between the businessmen and the military officers, it was agreed that the former would finance and help execute the project, because the army had no funds and was increasingly relying on foreign financing as it pushed back against the onslaught of its gargantuan neighbor. A sitting general with experience in special operations would oversee the mission, which one participant described as a “public-private partnership.” He would report directly to the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, the four-star Gen. Zaluzhniy.

Within days, Zelensky approved the plan, according to the four people familiar with the plot. All arrangements were made verbally, leaving no paper trail.

But the next month, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD learned of the plot and warned the CIA, according to several people familiar with the Dutch report. U.S. officials then promptly informed Germany, according to U.S. and German officials.

The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation, U.S. officials said. The Ukrainian president then ordered Zalyzhniy to halt it, according to Ukrainian officers and officials familiar with the conversation as well as Western intelligence officials. But the general ignored the order, and his team modified the original plan, these people said.

The general tasked with commanding the operation enlisted some of Ukraine’s top special-operations officers with experience in orchestrating high-risk clandestine missions against Russia to help coordinate the attack.

One of them was Roman Chervinsky, a decorated colonel who previously served in Ukraine’s main security and intelligence service, the SBU.

Chervinsky is currently on trial in Ukraine for unrelated charges. In July, he was released on bail after over a year in detention. Reached after his release, he declined to comment on the Nord Stream case, saying he wasn’t authorized to speak about it.

In a subsequent broadcast interview, he said that the sabotage had two positive effects for Ukraine: It helped loosen Russia’s grip on the European countries supporting Kyiv, and it left Moscow with only one main avenue for channeling gas to Europe, pipelines traversing Ukraine. Despite the war, Ukraine collects lucrative transit fees for Russian oil and gas estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Chervinsky and the sabotage team initially studied an older, elaborate plan to blow up the pipeline drafted by Ukrainian intelligence and Western experts after Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, according to people familiar with the plot.

After dismissing that idea due its cost and complexity, the planners settled on using a small sailing boat and a team of six—a mix of seasoned active duty soldiers and civilians with maritime expertise—to blow up the 700-mile-long pipelines that sat more than 260 feet below the sea’s surface.

In September 2022, the plotters rented a 50-foot leisure yacht called Andromeda in Germany’s Baltic port town of Rostock. The boat was leased with the help of a Polish travel agency that was set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a cover for financial transactions nearly a decade ago, according to Ukrainian officers and people familiar with the German investigation.

One crew member, a military officer on active duty who was fighting in the war, was a seasoned skipper, and four were experienced deep-sea divers, people familiar with the German investigation said. The crew included civilians, one of whom was a woman in her 30s who had trained privately as a diver. She was handpicked for her skills but also to lend more plausibility to the crew’s disguise as friends on holiday, according to one person familiar with the planning.

The skipper took a short leave from his unit, which had been fighting on the front in the southeast of Ukraine, and his commander was kept in the dark, according to two Ukrainians familiar with the plot.

Ukraine has a long history of training top civilian and military divers. A naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in the past trained deep-sea divers for the purposes of sabotage and demining. It also kept combat dolphins trained to attack enemy divers and blow up ships, according to two senior Ukrainian officers. The base was taken over by Russia after it occupied Crimea, and some of its staff moved elsewhere in Ukraine.

Armed only with diving equipment, satellite navigation, a portable sonar and open-source maps of the seabed charting the position of the pipelines, the crew set out. The four divers worked in pairs, according to people familiar with the German investigation. Operating in pitch-dark, icy waters, they handled a powerful explosive known as HMX that was wired to timer-controlled detonators. A small amount of the light explosive would be sufficient to rip open the high-pressure pipes.

Spending 20 minutes at that depth requires around three hours of decompression, and the person must then refrain from diving for at least 24 hours or risk serious injury.

Inclement weather forced the crew to make an unplanned stop in the Swedish port of Sandhamn. One diver accidentally dropped an explosive device to the bottom of the sea. The crew briefly discussed whether to abort the operation due to the bad weather but the storm soon subsided, two people familiar with the operation said.

Witnesses on other yachts moored in Sandhamn noted that the Andromeda was the only boat with a small Ukrainian flag hoisted on its mast.

In the wake of the attack, which took out three of the four conduits forming the pipelines, energy prices surged. Germany and other nations scrambled to nationalize energy companies that handled Russian gas but collapsed after the pipelines were destroyed. Even today Germany is paying around $1 million a day alone to lease floating terminals for liquefied natural gas or LNG, which only partly replaced the Russian gas flows channeled by Nord Stream.

Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the U.S., among others, sent out warships, divers, underwater drones and aircraft to investigate the area around the gas leaks.

Zelensky took Zaluzhniy to task, but the general shrugged off his criticism, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Zaluzhniy told Zelensky that the sabotage team, once dispatched, went incommunicado and couldn’t be called off because any contact with them could compromise the operation.

“He was told it’s like a torpedo—once you fire it at the enemy, you can’t pull it back again, it just keeps going until it goes ‘boom,’ ” a senior officer familiar with the conversation said.

Days after the attack, in October 2022, Germany’s foreign secret service received a second tipoff about the Ukrainian plot from the CIA, which again passed on a report by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD. It offered a detailed account of the attack, including the type of boat used and the possible route taken by the crew, according to German and Dutch officials.

The Netherlands built deep intelligence-gathering capacity in Ukraine and Russia after Russian-backed paramilitaries downed a Malaysia Airlines flight originating from Amsterdam over eastern Ukraine, two Dutch officials said.

Due to rules governing the sharing of classified intelligence, German police investigating the case weren’t allowed to see the Dutch report that linked Zaluzhniy and the Ukrainian military to the attack, but they were made aware of it by intelligence officials.

German investigators questioned dozens of potential witnesses, scanned the bottom of the sea around the blasts and sifted through masses of data including digital communication, travel records and financial transactions.

They had one lucky break. In rushing to leave Germany, the sabotage crew neglected to wash the Andromeda, allowing German detectives to find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples of the crew.

Investigators later identified their mobile phone numbers and their Iridium satellite phone. That data allowed them to reconstruct the entire journey of the boat, which moored in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. U.S. authorities sought a court order to obtain from Google the emails a Ukrainian businessman used to lease the boat, and handed them over to the Germans. That Ukrainian businessman had contacted a number of boat rental firms in Sweden as well as in Germany, starting from mid-May 2022.

Investigators then analyzed all mobile phone traffic in the areas where the boat was located, trawling through thousands of connections to distill the relevant data.

At one point they were startled to find out that thousands of German mobile phones were active in the tiny Swedish port of Sandhamn, which was nearly empty at the time the boat was sheltering there from a storm.

It later emerged that a vast cruise ship belonging to a tourist operator passed by and the phones of German passengers briefly linked up with the local cellular mast.

They struggled at one point to secure the cooperation of Polish authorities despite the fact that the saboteurs used Poland partly as a logistical base and stopped in the Polish port of Kolobrzeg.

A port official suspicious of the yacht’s crew alerted police. Poland’s border guard checked the identification of the crew, who produced passports from European Union members. They were allowed to continue sailing north, where they laid the rest of the mines, people familiar with the investigation say.

The entire port was covered by extensive video surveillance, they found. However, despite a history of close cooperation between Warsaw and Berlin in police matters, Polish officials initially refused to hand over the CCTV footage of the port. This year, they told their German colleagues that the footage had been routinely destroyed shortly after the Andromeda departed.

The Polish internal security agency ABW told the Journal that no such footage exists.

By November 2022, German investigators believed Ukrainians were behind the explosion.

Earlier this year, Zelensky ousted Zaluzhniy from his military post, saying a shakeup was needed to reboot the war effort. Zaluzhniy, who has been viewed domestically as a potential political rival, was later appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K., a position that grants him immunity from prosecution.

In June, German officials issued a confidential arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen who the Germans believe was one of the crew members. According to people familiar with the investigation, a van driving the Ukrainian sabotage team from Poland into Germany in 2022 was snapped by a German speed camera, and the man, a diving instructor living with his family near Warsaw, was in the photo.

Authorities in Poland didn’t act on the warrant. The instructor is believed to have since returned to Ukraine. Poland’s failure to arrest him is a major blow to the German probe, because he and other suspects have now been tipped off and will avoid travelling outside Ukraine, people familiar with the investigation said. Ukraine doesn’t extradite its own citizens.

Ukrainian officials who participated in or are familiar with the plot believe it would be impossible to put any of the commanding officers on trial, because no evidence exists beyond conversations among top officials who were, at least initially, all in agreement about wanting to blow up the pipelines.

“None of them will testify, lest they incriminate themselves,” one former officer said.

Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]

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How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? We went down to the spot to find out

German network ard chartered yacht and divers to see how sabotage occurred.

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It was an event that rocked Europe and shook world affairs. 

Early in the morning on Sept. 26, 2022, a series of powerful undersea explosions damaged pipelines under the Baltic Sea near Denmark that carried Russian natural gas to Germany. 

Fingers were immediately pointed at Ukraine, which had been at war with Russia since the latter invaded in February of that year. Ukraine denied involvement, and in the absence of reliable information, conspiracy theories proliferated about who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline.

Did a Russian submarine intentionally destroy it in order to cut off the gas supply to Germany, a country allied with Ukraine? Was it the CIA, as famed U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote? 

The German government has been tightlipped about the affair for two years, but this week, German media outlets ARD, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit jointly reported that federal prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant against a Ukrainian man. A Polish government spokesperson confirmed it.

The German reports identified the man as Volodymyr Z., a diving instructor who last resided in Poland. In a brief telephone conversation on Tuesday with reporters from ARD, Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, Volodymyr Z. expressed surprise at the accusations and denied involvement.

A report this week by the Wall Street Journal also pointed to Ukraine, suggesting the operation was carried out by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians with diving expertise and under the direction of Ukraine's then-commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

Journalists at ARD, Germany's public broadcaster, have been hot on the trail since the shocking explosions took place. I was one of the reporters who was part of the team that spent months piecing together what may have occurred. 

To understand what happened to the Nord Stream pipeline that day, ARD chartered the very yacht the perpetrators allegedly used and sent divers into the roiling waters of the Baltic Sea to see how the pipeline might have been attacked.

Group chartered sailing yacht

Several outlets have reported that in early September 2022, a sailing yacht called Andromeda set sail from the port of Hohe Düne in Rostock, Germany. According to the ARD investigation, the commando that was to destroy the pipelines was on board the Andromeda. The group is said to have consisted of six people — five men and one woman. Among them, it is suspected, was Volodymyr Z.

After stops in Rügen, Bornholm and Christiansø in Denmark, Sandhamn in Sweden and Kołobrzeg in Poland, the boat returned to Rostock. 

At some point during the trip, investigators believe the crew dove from the yacht down to the seabed and, in the darkness of the Baltic Sea, attached the explosive devices to the pipeline at a depth of around 80 metres. 

What happened later is well-known. At 2:03 a.m. local time on Sept. 26, 2022, the first explosion damaged Nord Stream 2. Approximately 16 hours later, three other explosions damaged Nord Stream 1. Investigators later found residue of the explosive HMX, also known as octogen, on board the Andromeda.

• Germany issued arrest warrant for Ukrainian diver in Nord Stream pipeline attack
• Denmark, like Sweden before them, ends probe into Nord Stream pipeline 'sabotage'

During our investigation, we wondered just how hard it would have been to carry out such a mission. 

The Andromeda is a charter yacht. Anyone can rent it — so we rented it, too, and took three divers with us.  

As with many charter yachts, the Andromeda was not in the best condition — our skipper called it "one of the worst boats I've ever sailed with." 

He said several electrical components were broken and that the yacht didn't move well in the waves. Then there was the swim platform, which the divers would need to get on and off the boat. If the swell is high, the platform moves up and down, punching into the sea. A diver trying to get back on the boat could be slammed on the head by the platform, causing serious injury. For us, this risk was too high. 

So we returned the Andromeda and chartered a professional diving vessel with a crew that usually recovers Second World War explosives from the bed of the Baltic Sea. 

We then drove to the exact spot where the first explosion happened — 120 kilometres off the German coast, with the Danish island Bornholm in sight.

Trained divers required

We arrived at 6 a.m. to witness a symbolic moment in the Baltic Sea. 

A Russian military ship appeared. Through our radio, we heard, "Russian warship delta echo, U.S. warship Yankee." The U.S. Navy was trying to make contact with the Russian Navy right before our eyes. How could a sabotage operation have gone on undetected in this environment?

The burst pipeline lay almost 80 metres beneath us, a depth not every diver could handle. 

You need to be trained as a tech diver. At that depth, you have to breathe a special mixture of oxygen, helium and nitrogen, and that means carrying about 220 pounds of equipment. 

It is also pitch black at the bottom of the sea. The multiple scuba tanks gave the divers about 40 minutes to find the pipeline, which means they needed to know precisely where to look. A sonar device was required to locate the pipeline beforehand. The Andromeda did not have this kind of device on board, but our new vessel did. 

Our tech divers found the burst pipeline on their second try and filmed it. 

The difficult part for the divers was returning to the surface. The pressure is so intense that if the ascent is not done correctly, divers could experience serious symptoms like paralysis or damage to their lungs. Doing proper decompression from such a depth — which requires divers to switch to a different gas mix — takes about two hours. 

Conducting a complex mission like that from the Andromeda would have been difficult and dangerous. According to the German investigation, it's plausible Volodymyr Z. was trained for dives like that.

Everyone who has examined the Andromeda agrees it's not the vessel anyone would choose to secure a mission. 

As our tech diver Derk Remmers put it: "I would use the Andromeda for a vacation, but not a sabotage mission."

Yet this could be precisely why the saboteurs used it. To stay undetected and unaccountable — which they managed to do until the charges were made public this week.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lea Struckmeier is an investigative journalist and presenter at ARD, Germany's public broadcaster. She is currently spending her Arthur F. Burns Fellowship with CBC.

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