Search on for 6 missing, including tech tycoon Mike Lynch, after yacht sinks off Italy
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Rescue personnel on boats near the scene where a luxury yacht sank, off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, Italy, on Aug 20.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PALERMO, Sicily – Divers scoured the wreck of a yacht off Sicily’s coast on Aug 20 to find six missing people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, following an intense storm that sank the vessel
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56m-long sailboat, was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather.
Fifteen people escaped before it capsized and the body of one person was swiftly recovered.
That left six passengers unaccounted for – Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Mr Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy; as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda.
“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” said Mr Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily.
The yacht was lying at a depth of 49m, giving divers only eight to 10 minutes at the wreck site before they must surface. Entering the boat also proved to be difficult, said the fire brigade, which is leading the search operation.
“Inside the ship, the spaces are very confined, and if you hit an obstacle it is very complicated to move forward, just as it is very difficult to find alternative routes,” said fire spokesman Luca Cari.
Fire department diver Marco Tilotta told reporters the vessel appeared to be intact and was lying on its right side. Divers had not ascertained whether the 72m-long mast had snapped somewhere along its length during the tempest.
Mr Karsten Borner, the skipper of a boat that had been moored alongside the Bayesian, said the yacht flipped on its side soon after the storm hit and sank within two minutes, giving those below deck little time to get to safety.
Lynch trial
Mr Lynch, 59, is one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs. He built the country’s largest software firm, Autonomy, and was referred to as Britain’s Bill Gates.
He sold the firm to HP for US$11 billion (S$14.4 billion) in 2011, after which the deal spectacularly unravelled with the US tech giant accusing him of fraud, resulting in a lengthy trial. Mr Lynch was eventually acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June.
Mr Morvillo represented Mr Lynch in the case, while Mr Bloomer had appeared as a character witness on his behalf.
In an extraordinary coincidence, Mr Stephen Chamberlain, Mr Mike Lynch’s co-defendant in the trial, died following a road accident in Britain over the weekend, his lawyer said on Monday.
The Bayesian was owned by Mr Lynch’s wife, who survived the disaster. Others on the yacht included Mr Lynch’s colleagues. The only body so far retrieved was that of the onboard chef Ricardo Thomas, an Antiguan citizen.
The British government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said it sent four inspectors to Sicily to conduct a “preliminary assessment”.
“Didn’t see it coming”
One expert at the scene of the disaster who declined to be named said an early focus of the official investigation would be whether the yacht’s crew had closed access hatches into the vessel before the storm struck.
Investigators would look at whether appropriate measures had been taken, given the forecasts for bad weather overnight.
Mr Borner, whose yacht was moored near the Bayesian, said that although there had been warnings of possible thunderstorms, there had been no indication they would be particularly violent.
“Thunderstorms can turn out good or bad and this one was a real violent squall ... very violent, very intense, a lot of water, and I think a turning system like a tornado,” he told Reuters.
Storms and heavy rains have ravaged Italy in recent days, after weeks of scorching heat warmed the sea temperature to record highs, raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts said.
“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 deg Celsius, which is almost 3 degrees more than normal,” said meteorologist Luca Mercalli.
“We can’t say that this is all due to global warming but we can say that it has an amplifying effect,” he told Reuters. REUTERS
