The summer celebration was supposed to be a joyful occasion. British tech tycoon Mike Lynch had invited his closest lawyers and friends to the Italian port of Porticello, near Palermo, to celebrate the end of a long 13-year legal battle. Twelve guests flew in from the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland to join him.
However, the celebration turned into a tragedy. Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and five others died when their yacht, the Bayesian, capsized in bad weather early Monday morning. A manslaughter investigation has been launched by Italian authorities to determine what went wrong.
The Bayesian was a luxurious 56-meter superyacht worth £30 million, with six suites and the tallest aluminum mast in the world. Experts believe this massive mast may have contributed to the yacht tipping over during a sudden, violent storm.
Mike Lynch, who had recently won a long legal fight in the US, had named the yacht after the Bayesian inference, a statistical method he used in his PhD thesis. Lynch became extremely wealthy after selling his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
Disaster struck around 5 a.m. when a rare tornado, known as a waterspout, hit the yacht while it was anchored. The crew fired off distress flares, which local fishermen saw, prompting them to help the survivors.
Karsten Borner, the captain of a nearby boat, said he noticed the yacht had disappeared after the storm. His crew found some survivors on a life raft, including a one-year-old girl named Sophie. Sophie’s mother, Charlotte Golunski, described the terrifying moments she struggled to keep her daughter safe in the raging sea.
Six passengers are still missing, including Mike Lynch and his daughter. Divers have found the yacht nearly intact on the seabed at a depth of 48 meters, but debris inside has made it difficult to search for the missing people. Experts believe the victims might be trapped inside the vessel, and there is only a short window of time left to rescue them, as air pockets could be their only hope for survival.
The next 24 hours are critical, as divers continue their search, hoping to find any survivors who may be trapped inside the sunken yacht.