Rescuers were on Monday searching for six people – including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch – who went missing after a luxury yacht was hit by a tornado and sank off the coast of Sicily, killing one of the 22 people on board.
The vessel was hit by the tornado at around 5 a.m. Monday, according to a spokesperson for Italy’s Coast Guard. The yacht was anchored about a half a mile from the port of Porticello on the Mediterranean island.
Four Britons and two Americans are among those missing, the spokesperson said.
A source told CNN that Lynch, the founder of software giant Autonomy, was a passenger on the yacht. His wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued. The source spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Fifteen others were rescued from the scene and one child was airlifted to the children’s hospital in Palermo. Eight people were hospitalized in total, according to the mayor’s office. One body was found on the hull of the yacht, the Coast Guard said.
A small waterspout – one of several types of tornadoes – developed over the area Monday morning, according to a report from the European Severe Weather Database. Other strong storms across Sicily brought torrential rainfall late Sunday, dumping more than 4 inches (100 mm) of rain in less than four hours in Brolo, east of Palermo, in less than four hours.
The weather forecast had warned of potential strong winds, with storms across the entire southern region of Italy Sunday, the Coast Guard spokesperson added.
One survivor, Charlotte, 35, described how she battled to hold onto her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, reported Italian news agency ANSA, as a barrage of waves sank the yacht.
“In two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately hugged her again amidst the fury of the waves. I held her tightly, close to me, while the sea was stormy,” she told journalists. “Many were screaming.”
The captain is among the survivors, the spokesperson for Italy’s Coast Guard said.
The 56-meter yacht called the “Bayesian,” which flies under a British flag, had mostly British passengers and crew, in addition to two Anglo-French, one New Zealander, one Irish and one Sri Lankan, the spokesperson told CNN.
The Italian fire brigade said its divers had reached the yacht’s hull 49 meters (160 feet) below sea level, according to a press statement. The brigade also dispatched helicopters to bolster the search operation.
The captain of a nearby boat said he turned on his engine to avoid crashing into the Bayesian, Reuters reported, as fierce gales swept the area.
“This morning we got this strong gust and we had to start the engine to keep the ship in an angled position,” he told reporters on Monday. “After the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone.”
Lynch’s Legal History
Lynch, the British entrepreneur missing from the yacht, had been plagued by legal woes since 2011, when he sold his company to tech firm Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion.
In June, he was acquitted of fraud by a jury in San Francisco, after prosecutors accused him of trying to inflate Autonomy’s revenue in the latest chapter of the legal saga.
He turned ground-breaking research at Cambridge University into the foundation of Autonomy, which became Britain’s biggest software company and a member of the blue-chip FTSE 100 index.
Lynch was lauded by academics and scientists and asked to advise the British government on technology and innovation.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
A Violent Storm
One man died and six people were missing, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, after a luxury yacht was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm and sank off Sicily early on Monday.
The British-flagged “Bayesian,” a 56-metre-long (184-ft) sailboat, was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.
Eyewitnesses said the yacht vanished quickly beneath the waves shortly before dawn. Fifteen people escaped before it went down, including a one-year-old child.
The names of the dead and missing were not immediately released, but a person familiar with the rescue operation confirmed that Lynch was not accounted for.
The Italian coast guard said the missing had British, American and Canadian nationalities.
“The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude,” a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo told Reuters.
Storms and heavy rainfall have swept down Italy in recent days - with floods and landslides causing major damage in the north of the country - after weeks of scorching heat.
The captain of a nearby boat told Reuters that when the storm hit he had turned the engine on to keep control of the vessel and avoid a collision with the Bayesian.
“We managed to keep the ship in position and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone,” Karsten Borner told journalists. The other boat “went flat on the water, and then down,” he added.
He said his crew then found some of the survivors on a life raft - including three who were seriously injured, and a baby girl and her mother - and took them on board before the coast guard picked them up.
A Renowned Entrepreneur
Lynch, aged 59, is one of Britain’s best-known tech entrepreneurs. He built the country’s largest software firm, Autonomy, from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University, and became known as Britain’s Bill Gates.
He sold the firm to HP for $11 billion in 2011, before the deal unraveled spectacularly following the acquisition, with the U.S. tech giant accusing him of fraud.
Once lauded by academics, scientists and politicians, Lynch spent much of the last decade in court defending his name. He was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June, after he spent more than a year living effectively under house arrest.
He said at the time that he was “elated” to be cleared in the criminal trial in which he denied any wrongdoing and blamed HP for botching the integration of the two companies.
The Search Continues
The coast guard said divers were inspecting the wreck of the Bayesian, which was lying at a depth of 49 metres.
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation to look into what had gone wrong.
The yacht’s name would resonate with Lynch because his PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune was based on Bayesian theory.
The ship won a string of awards for its design and can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites and a crew of 10, according to online specialist yacht sites.
The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on Aug. 14 and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor,” according to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder.
A U.K. foreign ministry spokesperson said British officials were in contact with local authorities over the incident and were ready to provide consular support for Britons who were affected.
(Writing by Giulia Segreti and Crispian BalmerAdditional reporting by Danilo Arnone in Porticello, Marta Di Donfrancesco and Alvise Armellini in Rome, Paul Sandle and Sachin Ravikumar in London, Editing by Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell)
