A British tech entrepreneur, his daughter and the chairman of Morgan Stanley International are reportedly among the six people missing in waters off the coast of Italy after a 184-foot luxury sailing yacht called the Bayesian sank following a bout of bad weather—including tornadoes—near Sicily early Monday morning.
Italian emergency services headed out to sea towards the area off the Sicilian coast on Tuesday, ... [+]
The boat had 22 people on board — 10 crew and 12 passengers — including people from the United States, Britain and Canada, when it overturned at around 5 a.m. Monday, according to the Italian coast guard.
Fifteen people were rescued from the vessel (including a 1-year-old girl), one person was found dead and six, including two Americans, remain missing, according to multiple reports.
Michael Lynch, a British tech entrepreneur and one-time billionaire, is reportedly among those missing with his lawyer and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch (his wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued).
Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of the Morgan Stanley International bank and insurance company Hiscox, is also reportedly among the missing.
Authorities on Monday told the BBC the missing people are presumed to still be inside the boat.
Local media reported the person who died was a member of the crew.
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An ongoing search operation includes divers attempting to search the vessel, now sitting 160 feet below sea level, as well as rescue boats and helicopters, according to CNN.
The Bayesian was anchored near the port of Porticello overnight Sunday when a harsh storm hit the coast that included a "waterspout," a tornado-like swirling column of air and water. The ship tipped over and quickly was drug underwater by its massive mast—it had the tallest aluminum mast in the world at 246 feet. Of the 15 people rescued in the aftermath, eight were treated at a local hospital.
$215,000. That's the cost to charter the Bayesian, a single-mast sailing vessel, for one week.
“She told me that while they were sleeping, at a certain point the yacht overturned due to the tornado, and they found themselves in the water,” Dr. Domenico Cipolla, head of the emergency room at the pediatric hospital in Palermo, Italy, told The Times. “Some of them immediately managed to get onto the lifeboat. And some, evidently, didn’t make it.”
Lynch was acquitted in a fraud trial in June after he was accused by Hewlett-Packard of artificially inflating the value of Autonomy before HP bought it for more than $11 billion in 2011. HP wrote off $8.8 million of Autonomy's value within a year of buying the company. Today, The Times estimates Lynch has a net worth of £500 million. He "had a lot of pride" in his yacht, a member of his staff told the U.K. paper, and business filings show the boat is legally owned by his wife, Bacares.