Luxury Sailing Boat: The Italy’s Coast Guard said that fifteen people were pulled from the wreckage on Monday. Later, one body was found in the hull of the ship that sank.
Four Britons and two Americans are missing. Among them are British tech mogul Mike Lynch, head of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer, and well-known lawyer Chris Morvillo.
This is what we know.
What took place?
The sailing boat was probably flipped over early Monday morning when a small waterspout, a type of tornado, went through the Mediterranean island. It happened in heavy rain and lightning.
The “Bayesian,” a boat with British flag, was anchored about a half mile from the port of Porticello on the northern coast of Sicily. Reporter spoke to Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s Civil Protection, on Tuesday. He said that the ship sank because the storm broke the mast in half.
Witnesses said there were fierce gales and hurricane-like winds that threw a lot of garbage onto the pier.
The captain of a nearby boat said that he saw more than a dozen survivors in the area holding on to life rafts. He steadied his ship so that it wouldn’t crash into the Bayesian.
Karsten Bower told reporters in Palermo on Monday, “We got this strong hurricane gust, and we had to start the engine to keep the ship at an angle.” “We saw that the ship behind us was gone after the storm was over.”
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He said that Bower and his team saved four hurt people before calling Italy’s Coast Guard, who then saved the rest of the survivors.
A child was one of the people who were saved and was flown to a children’s hospital in Palermo. The mayor’s office says that eight people were taken to the hospital.
According to the Italian news service ANSA, the girl’s mother, Charlotte, talked about how hard it was to hold on to her 1-year-old daughter Sofia.
“I lost the baby in the water in two seconds, but I grabbed her again right away, even though the waves were rough.” “I held her close to me while the sea was rough,” she told reporters. “There were many screams.”
A doctor at the Palermo children’s hospital said that the mother and girl were later reunited with James, the father.
“The survivors are very tired and are always asking about the people who are missing,” doctor Domenico Cipolla said on Monday. “They can’t stop talking and crying because they know they very likely won’t find their friends alive.”
Monday, officials said that Italy’s fire department sent helicopters to help with the search. The group also said that on Tuesday, divers would try to get into the sunk ship again after failing on Monday.
Marco Tilotta, an inspector for the diving unit of Palermo’s local fire service, says that because the wreck is so deep, divers can only work there for short periods of time. On Monday, the Italian fire department said that divers had reached the hull of the boat, which is 49 meters (160 feet) below sea level.
A person familiar with the operations told to media, on the condition of anonymity, that the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) of the UK will also send a team of four inspectors to Palermo to do a preliminary review of the scene.
Who was on board?
A spokesman for Italy’s Coast Guard told media that there were 22 people on board the Bayesian, which was flying a British flag and had mostly British passengers and crew. There were also two Anglo-French, one Irish, and one Sri Lankan.
Lynch, the 59-year-old British tech investor who fought a fraud case earlier this year in the United States, is one of the famous people who didn’t show up. The case started after Lynch’s disastrous $11 billion sale of his company to tech company Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
It was also said that his 18-year-old daughter was missing. Angela Bacares, Lynch’s wife, lived through the accident. That morning, Bacares told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, she woke up because the boat was leaning. It was 4 a.m. She said that she and her husband weren’t worried at first, but they became worried when the yacht’s windows broke and chaos broke out.
Bacares talked to the newspaper at a hospital in the town of Termini Imerese in Sicily while sitting in a wheelchair. It said she had cuts on her feet and patches on other parts of her body.
Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s Civil Protection, says that Bloomer, a wealthy businessman, and Morvillo, a famous lawyer, along with both of their wives, are also missing.
A lawyer at Clifford Chance from the United States named Morvillo helped beat Lynch’s US fraud case in June. A spokesperson for Clifford Chance said that another employee of the company, Ayla Ronald, and her partner lived through the incident.
According to Reuters, the body that was found on board was that of the cook, Ricardo Thomas, who was from Antigua.
What do we know about the boat?
Reuters claimed that the 56-meter (184-foot) yacht was made by the Italian company Perini Navi and was launched in 2008. The boat has been for rent for $215,000 (€195,000) a week, according to the Associated Press.
Lynch’s wife has something to do with the boat. Records from the marine information service Equasis show that the Bayesian is owned by the company Revtom Limited. The most recent yearly report for the company, from April, names Bacares as the owner.
Reuters says that the name of the ship, “Bayesian,” has something to do with the statistics theory that helped Lynch make his fortune.
However, the yacht’s mast was only 72.27 meters (237 feet) above the approved water line. This is only a few meters short of the world record for the tallest mast, which stands at 75.2 meters. The Perini Navi website said it was the world’s largest aluminum mast.
Caroline White is the deputy editor of BOAT International, a media group that covers the superyacht business. She says that Perini Navi is known for making “good quality boats.”
White told media that the Bayesian should “theoretically become more stable” if it was de-masked. “But things might be different if you are in the middle of a violent storm and the winds are so strong they hold you to the water,” she said.
Weather situations that are dangerous
Late Sunday night, heavy rain fell all over Sicily because of strong storms. According to the first accounts, the yacht may have sunk because of a small water spout that formed over the area on Monday morning.
A waterspout is a spinning stream of air that forms over water or moves from land to water. It is one type of tornado. Often, they come with strong winds, rough seas, hail, and dangerous lightning. They happen most often over tropical seas, but they can happen almost anywhere.
Researchers at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Spain say that the Mediterranean Sea has been very hot, hitting a record daily median of 28.9 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) last week. Waterspouts need warm water to get energy.
An Italian climatologist named Luca Mercalli told reporter that the water around Sicily has been even warmer than usual, hitting almost 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).
He said, “Warmer oceans have more energy and more humidity to transfer to the atmosphere, which are the most important things that make storms happen.”
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