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Six people are missing and one has died after a luxury yacht capsized in a storm off the coast of Sicily, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The missing people are feared to have been stuck in their cabins when the ship was caught in the eye of a tornado at four in the morning. According to Giornale di Sicilia, it is considered likely that the missing are still inside the yacht, which sank at a depth of 49 meters.

“We didn’t see that coming” is all the ship’s captain James Catfield has commented to the media. A tearful Catfield has been treated for a calf injury.

Divers are currently surveying the situation. A diver who commented on a Sicilian newspaper Marco Tilotta says that the first dive has been completed, visibility is good and the next goal is to get inside the ship.

– We are doing everything we can to find the bodies. The weather conditions are getting worse, but we hope that we can continue the operation without any problems.

There were a total of 22 people on board, 10 crew members and 12 passengers. 15 of them have been saved. One person, who worked as a cook on board, has been confirmed dead Ricardo Tomas.

One of the missing is a British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynchwho founded an IT company called Autonomy in the 1990s. The American technology company Hewlett-Packard bought the company for 11 billion dollars in 2011. Known as “Britain’s Bill Gates”, Lynch has also founded other technology companies, such as Invoke Capital and Darktrace. In 2018, Lynch was accused of fraud related to a business transaction, for which he was acquitted last June.

Also Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is among the lost.

Rescuers have been trying to find missing people from the wreckage.

The rescue service of Sicily has confirmed the list of missing persons, on which, in addition to the Lynches, the director of Morgan Stanley International has been reported as missing Jonathan Bloomer with his wife and CEO of Lynch’s company Chris Morvillon and Nada Morvillon.

According to Sicilian newspapers, most of the passengers were employees of Lynch’s company and they were on board on a prize trip. Lynch’s wife is also among those rescued Angela Bacares. He is currently in a wheelchair due to the wounds on his legs.

The Bayesian sailing vessel is registered to the company Revtom, managed by Bacares. The woman is said to have been sitting on the beach on Tuesday, staring intently at the sea, towards the place where the ship sank.

The youngest of those rescued was only one year old Sofiawho was on board with his parents. The whole family survived the accident.

Investigation underway

Giornale di Sicilia reports that according to some evidence, a strong wind broke the yacht’s mast, causing the boat to capsize and fill with water. Eyewitnesses say that the ship sank in an instant.

Next to the ship was a Dutch sailing ship, the crew of which saved some of those on the accident yacht. The captain of a Dutch ship Karsten Börner tells a Sicilian newspaper that they were on their way to port when the storm hit.

– Then we realized that the platform next to us was no longer there, Börner describes.

The Sicilian prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into what happened. Questions have been raised as to how a modern luxury ship renovated in 2020 could sink in seconds when nearby ships survived the storm completely undamaged. Britain has also sent a team of inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Unit to Palermo to assess the incident.

The sunken superyacht is registered to a company owned by the wife of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch. AOP

A luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily has been identified as a nearly 56-meter-long superyacht that goes by the name Bayesian.

According to Superyachttimes, the vessel was built by the Italian shipping company Perini Navi in ​​2008, and the interior of the vessel was designed by the French designer responsible for the interior of several luxury yachts Remi Tessier.

Formerly known as Salute, the ship has an 11.5 meter wide aluminum hull and previously held the record for the tallest aluminum mast in the world. According to the experts interviewed by the British newspaper Telegraph, the mast rising to a wild height of 75 meters could also have been part of the reason for the sinking of the ship.

According to the Telegraph, on the morning of the sinking, wind gusts blowing at a speed of nearly 65 kilometers per hour were measured at Palermo airport, which is located near the sinking site.

The current record for the world’s longest mast is held by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ yacht Koru.

Bayesian is the 677th largest yacht in the world. Among the yachts built by the shipping company Perini Navi, it is the 17th largest. The ship’s top speed is approximately 15.5 knots, i.e. slightly less than 30 kilometers per hour.

Several media have reported that the vessel was registered to the Revtom Limited company operating on the Mansaari. The sole shareholder of the company has been marked as the technology industry entrepreneur who is still missing by Mike Lynch wife Angela Bacares.

Bacares is among those already rescued from the accident.