2024-08-20 19:23:30
It started with lightning and thunder and continued with a water tornado. A superyacht moored near a port in Sicily quickly ran into trouble and ended up underwater early Monday morning. Rescuers are still searching for six passengers, including a businessman nicknamed “British Bill Gates”. The British station BBC brought a reconstruction of the tragic accident.
Bad weather has plagued the Mediterranean coast since the middle of last week and strong storms were not expected to stop. Nevertheless, the luxury superyacht Bayesian took to the water on Sunday. When the worst came, she was less than a kilometer from Perini’s home port on the Italian island of Sicily.
At that time, there were twenty-two people on board the 56-meter vessel, the rental of which costs almost five million crowns for a week. Ten were the crew, the remaining twelve were passengers.
Britain’s Charlotte Golunska was woken up by thunder, lightning and “waves that rocked the ship” on the night of Sunday to Monday, the British station BBC quotes her. The Italian Coast Guard spoke of a “violent storm” that caused the water tornado. The woman thought she was experiencing “the end of the world”, so she went on board with her partner and one-year-old daughter Sofia. He cites this as the reason why they stayed alive.
The waves threw them into the water. “I lost my daughter in the sea for two seconds,” she describes. “I quickly grabbed her in the raging waves. I held her above the water with all my strength, my arms outstretched to keep her from drowning. I screamed for help, but all I heard was the screams of others around me.”
It is not yet clear what exactly happened to the ship or how the other passengers and crew got into the sea. But she was probably anchored and the storm broke the single seventy-two meter high mast, making the yacht unstable. “The ship was still sailing, and then suddenly it disappeared. I saw with my own eyes how it was sinking,” the British station quoted the testimony of a fisherman who went to the port to see what was happening.
The captain of another ship, Karsten Borner, who was at sea at the same time and had better luck, also speaks similarly. When a strong wind came, he managed to stabilize the ship. Then they still had to maneuver with the crew to avoid the Bayesian yacht. “We managed to keep the boat in position. But when the storm ended, we noticed that the yacht behind us was already gone,” he said.
The luxury vessel Bayesian went down at approximately five in the morning.
Rescue operation
Borner and his crew then saw a red flare, so they went to the place from where it was fired. “We found a lifeboat with fifteen people. Four were injured, three of them seriously. We took them on our ship,” he describes how the rescue took place.
After the storm calmed down, the captain of the fishing boat, Fabio Cefalu, also went out to sea. He too noticed the flare from the lifeboat. “On the surface we saw pillows, the rest of the ship and everything that was on board when the ship sank. We didn’t see any people,” he added.
Italian rescuers soon began searching for the remaining seven people who did not get on the lifeboat. They found one drowned. They have not officially confirmed his identity yet, but the media reports that it should be a chef.
The other six people are probably still trapped on the seabed in the sunken yacht. “We searched all day with the help of helicopters and boats, but we found nothing. It doesn’t make sense, in these conditions we should have found something already,” explains the spokesman of the Sicilian civil protection Francesco Venuto, why he believes that other passengers are still on the vessel.
Divers tried to get below deck already on Monday, but their way was blocked by furniture and ship’s equipment. The search continues. On Tuesday, a special team joined the rescuers.
An entrepreneur and a fresh university student
The yacht’s accident is mainly reported by the British media, as most of its crew came from there. Among the missing is 59-year-old Mike Lynch, a billionaire and technology entrepreneur nicknamed “Britain’s Bill Gates”. He is also looking for his eighteen-year-old daughter, Hannah, who recently graduated from high school and was going to university after the holidays.
British businessman Mike Lynch is missing after a yacht accident off Sicily. | Photo: Reuters
Also missing are Jonathan Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley bank manager, his wife Judy, who financially supported cervical cancer research, and Lynch’s lawyer, Chris Morvillo. The identity of the last passenger has not yet been released.
The group went on the ship to celebrate the end of a twelve-year lawsuit involving Lynch. American authorities accused him of embezzling eleven billion dollars (250 billion crowns). In June, the courts found Lynch innocent. A co-accused in the case, Stephen Chamnerlain, was also acquitted. However, he was hit by a car last Saturday and died of his injuries.
Video: A luxury yacht sank off Sicily. There were 22 people on board (20/08/2024)
A luxury yacht sank off Sicily. There were 22 people on board. | Video: Reuters