Superyacht sinks off Sicily coast, confirms six missing and one death. The luxury yacht sunk during a tornado which was caused by a freak storm off the coast of Sicily.
A search and rescue operation are currently underway and confirms one fatality and records six missing passengers.
Reportedly, 15 people have been rescued of the wreck, with eight of the passengers being hospitalised. The all eight were in stable condition, which included a one-year-old baby.
The yacht was named as the Bayesian, and was caught in the storm when a tornado hit the area, located off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, around 5:00 a.m.
According to the reports, the incident indicates that the passengers on yacht were tourists on holiday in Sicily, and it is a fearful assumption that those missing might have been ‘trapped inside their cabins’.
Helicopter and coastguard ships were sent to search the wreck above the surface and below. The divers already reached the hull, which was located 500 metres from the coast and 49 metres below the surface.
Divers also saw ‘corpses through the portholes’ of the sunken ship as the body of a man was being recovered at a depth of around 50 metres. The body recovered is believed to be that of Recaldo Thomas, who is a vessel’s Canadian chef.
Moreover, based on the information received by the nautical map, the Bayesian was at anchor soon after 2 am local time.
As per the theory, the ship made a stop at Milazzo, around 160 kilometres up the coast in the direction of the Italian mainland, before it sailed on to Porticello. The Witnesses said that the ship was still anchored close to the port when the tornado hit. ‘The boat was all lit up,’ said the witness in Porticello.
The witness added to the report, “Around 4:30 in the morning it was gone. A beautiful boat where there had been a party. It was like a normal holiday, spent happily at sea, that turned into a tragedy. The boat was not much far from the port. It took very little to raise the anchor and head for the port.”
“Evidently, they all were surprised by the storm that suddenly hit and were unable to avoid themselves from sinking,” the witness added.
Among the missing passengers there was a tech entrepreneur – Mike Lynch, who has regularly been described as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’.
Lynch, aged 59 is the founder of the enterprise software firm Autonomy and became the target of a ‘protracted legal battle’ with Hewlett Packard after the US tech giant accused him of ‘inflating the company’s value’ in an $11 billion sale.
The entrepreneur was extradited from Britain to the US, last year, to stand trial. As Lynch was acquitted of fraud following a three-month trial.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter is also among the missing, whereas Lynch’s wife – Angela Baracas, was among the 14 other survivors.
Other high profile passengers that remain missing are Jonathan Bloomer, Chairman of Morgan Stanley International and Chris Morvillo, who is a lawyer at major firm Clifford Chance.