One dead and six missing after British-flagged yacht sinks in tornado off Sicily
Mike Lynch, a British tech entrepreneur, is reportedly among six people missing after a 56-metre superyacht was sunk by a tornado during a storm off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily.
One person died after the British-flagged Bayesian, which had 22 people on board, capsized about 5am on Monday off Palermo in the Mediterranean in bad weather.
The vessel had a crew of 10 and was carrying 12 passengers, the Italian coastguard said.
Fifteen people were initially rescued and taken to shore at Porticello, where eight were being treated in hospital. The rescued included a one-year-old child and her mother.
The body of a man – reportedly the vessel's chef – was found near the wreckage.
However, six others were still unaccounted for, said Luca Cari, an Italian fire rescue service spokesman.
Those reported missing initially were said to include four British passengers, two Americans and a Canadian.
Mr Lynch, the founder of software company Autonomy was acquitted of a multibillion-pound fraud in the US in June, is among those missing, a person familiar with the rescue operation said. A spokesperson for Mr Lynch said there was no comment.
Mr Lynch, aged 59, was acquitted in June by a jury in San Francisco of fraud charges linked to the sale of his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
The sale cemented Mr Lynch's reputation as Britain's answer to Bill Gates, but it quickly turned sour after Hewlett-Packard wrote down Autonomy's value by $8.8 billion.
"The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected but not of this magnitude," a coastguard official in Palermo told Reuters.
The yacht was anchored 700 metres from the Porticello port when it was struck by a waterspout, which resembles a mini tornado over a body of water. They can form during severe thunderstorms, descending from a cloud to form a rotating mixture of wind and water.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/europe/2024/08/19/seven-missing-after-british-flagged-yacht-sinks-in-tornado-off-sicily/