The yacht of British technology mogul Mike Lynch was named after a mathematical model for calculating risks.
But no one could have predicted the destruction a pre-dawn storm on Monday would wreak on the 184-foot sailing ship and the 22 revelers on board.
Shortly after 4 a.m., lightning began to flash over the warm waters off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily.
Within minutes, a tornado-like waterspout hit the superyacht at its anchorage in Porticello harbor.
“We didn’t see this coming,” James Catflield, captain of the Bayesian, told La Repubblica from a hospital bed on Tuesday, just hours after the ship sank at a depth of 50 metres.
Fifteen people – including Lynch’s wife and a mother with her one-year-old baby – managed to escape.
Six passengers were still missing on Wednesday morning local time: Lynch, 59, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, New York lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Morgan Stanley executive Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.
The body of cook Ricardo Thomas – one of the ten crew members – was the only known death.
Lynch, who is also known as “Britain’s Bill Gates”, had invited his guests to a large celebration on board the yacht to mark his acquittal on charges of fraud amounting to billions of dollars following a federal trial in San Francisco.
Lynch was accused of trying to increase the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
After the sale, HP wrote off $8.8 billion from the acquisition, claiming that Lynch had falsified the balance sheet.
The legal battle lasted a grueling twelve years. In addition to his 13 months of house arrest, Lynch faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The result was astonishing. Less than 1% of criminal cases in federal courts end in an acquittal.
Morvillo, a 59-year-old partner at a prestigious law firm, described the euphoria in the courtroom.
“It was an electrifying moment. I’ve never experienced anything like it in a courtroom before,” Morvillo said on the legal podcast “For the Defense” just days before the Bayesian disaster.
After the acquittal, Lynch’s wife, 57-year-old Angela Baracas, screamed and ran to hug her husband, he said.
“Grown people were sobbing, hugging each other… people were clapping, it was remarkable,” Morvillo said, describing the celebration that followed, “which lasted until the early hours of the morning.”
In an emotional LinkedIn post after the verdict, Morvillo thanked his two daughters and his wife for their support throughout the legal battle.
A source at the family’s luxury apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side said it was believed that Morvillo’s daughters, both in their 20s, were in Italy with their parents but were not on the boat.
Lynch, whose net worth fell from $1.1 billion to $650 million last year, spoke of a new chance at life.
“The question is, what do you want to do with it?” Lynch told the London Sunday Times in July after the acquittal.
These celebrations continued into the summer and culminated in a major Mediterranean cruise aboard the Bayesian.
But on Monday morning it was shaken when a severe storm swept through Porticello, sinking the yacht in just two minutes – while smaller boats nearby appeared to escape with less damage.
“We waited for the waterspout to pass,” local fisherman Fabio Cefalù told EVN News, recalling how he stayed on land when the gust hit and watched it engulf the Bayesian.
“After 10 minutes we went out to sea and saw cushions and the rest of the boat and everything on the deck at sea.
However, we didn’t see any people in the sea.”
What you should know after a tornado sank the yacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily, leaving one person dead and six missing:
- A superyacht capsized off the coast of Sicily when a tornado struck the region early Monday morning, killing one passenger and leaving five others missing – including Michael Lynch, a tech tycoon known as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” officials said.
- According to the Telegraph, Lynch had invited guests from the law firm Clifford Chance, which represents him, as well as from his own company, Invoke Capital, to the trip.
- Captain James Catfield, who was piloting the 184-foot British-flagged boat, was among 15 crew and passengers who survived the tornado before sunrise Monday.
- Footage from a surveillance camera taken 200 metres from where the Bayesian sank on Monday shows it slowly disappearing.
- The Italian authorities stated that the passengers’ chances of survival in the accident were very slim, but one should “never say never”.
The exact cause of the superyacht’s sinking is unknown, but some experts speculate that the unusually tall mast of 240 feet may have caused the otherwise very seaworthy vessel to sink.
The mast may have acted like a sail, pushing the boat onto its side in strong winds, Maritime Search and Rescue Council chairman Matthew Schanck told the BBC.
Whatever happened, it happened quickly and the people on board had only a few moments to save themselves.
“The boat was still floating, then suddenly it disappeared,” another fisherman who witnessed the disaster told the local newspaper “Giornale di Sicilia”.
On board, Lynch’s wife Bacares was shaken awake after the boat had taken on a strong “edge”.
The Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica reported that she initially thought everything was fine, but then she was showered with shards of glass and cut her feet while climbing over the debris, running on deck and over the railing into the stormy sea.
Another passenger, Charlotte Golunski, had gone on deck with her partner James and their one-year-old daughter when the storm hit. She described “thunder, lightning and waves making our boat dance” and it seemed like it was “the end of the world.”
Then they were thrown into the salt water by the storm.
“I lost my daughter in the sea for two seconds, then I quickly hugged her in the midst of the raging waves,” she told La Repubblica.
“I held her above water with all my strength and stretched my arms up to prevent her from drowning.”
“It was completely dark. I couldn’t keep my eyes open in the water. I screamed for help, but all I heard around me were the screams of the others.”
As the boat slipped beneath the waves in the chaos, a small inflatable life raft was deployed. The 15 survivors managed to climb aboard before being rescued by a nearby boater.
Authorities say the six missing passengers are believed to be trapped in cabins inside the boat – a luxurious place on the water but a claustrophobic trap underwater as furniture, luggage and sailing equipment float around and block the aisles.
The search is made more difficult by the fact that the wreck lies at great depths, meaning that divers can only stay at the site for no more than ten minutes before having to resurface to get oxygen.
Nick Sloane, an engineer who was involved in the Costa Concordia salvage operation ten years ago, told Sky News there was a possibility the missing passengers were still alive – they could have survived in air pockets in the wreckage.
He said search teams had “only a very small window of time to find the people who are stuck.” Italian authorities said late Tuesday that the chances of survival were very slim, but that they should “never say never.”
