Rescuers face ‘very difficult’ seek for lacking yacht passengers
- The captain was interviewed in a hospital room in the town close to Palermo
The captain of the doomed Bayesian luxury yacht that capsized and sank after being caught in a lethal waterspout off the coast of Sicily early yesterday has broken his silence on the disaster.
James Catfield was named by Italian media as one of fifteen crewmembers and passengers who were rescued from the raging seas by another ship after they bailed out of the superyacht.
The ship’s chef Ricardo Thomas was found dead in the sea by search teams yesterday.
Another five people, including British tech billionaire Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and the chairman of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer, remain missing amid fears they were trapped inside the ship’s cabins.
Speaking from a hospital room in the town of Termini Imerese close to Palermo, the captain, in a state of grief and shock, could only utter one sentence.
‘We didn’t see it coming,’ he told La Repubblica.
The luxury sailboat was anchored just a few hundred metres off the coast of Porticello on calm seas when it was suddenly struck by a violent waterspout just before 5am on Monday.
It is believed the ship sank after its mast – one of tallest in the world at an enormous 246ft-high – snapped during the brutal incident and keeled over, taking the hull beyond the ‘down-flooding angle’, according to nautical experts.
A handout photo made available on August 19 by Perini Navi Press Office shows the ‘Bayesian’ sailing boat, in Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Mike Lynch’s superyacht Bayesian (pictured) was anchored off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, Sicily, when a waterspout struck the area just before 5am on Monday, wrecking the boat and causing it to rapidly disappear beneath the waves
An emergency and rescue service boat navigates on the sea near the site where a luxury yacht sank, off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italy, August 19
Italian Coast Guard Command teams and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue operations with helicopters and ships to find the missing people after the Bayesian sank
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is still missing. His wife Angela Bacares (right) was among the 15 people who were rescued from the yacht
Former shipyard manager and maritime technical inspector Gino Ciriaci told Italian daily Corriere Della Sera said once the mast had fallen, the vessel was far more prone to pitching and rolling as it was battered by waves without the sails to steady it.
In the case of the Bayesian, he said the waterspout was so violent that the boat, dragged down by its broken mast, tilted until the edge of the deck slipped under the surface.
The entire ordeal likely lasted only a few minutes, with the ship sinking rapidly as it took on seawater.
Specialist divers had reached the ship yesterday afternoon but their search efforts were met with unexpected complications.
‘Access was limited to the bridge, due to the difficulty represented by the presence of furnishings obstructing the divers’ passage,’ the fire crews said in a statement.
The search operation was made yet more difficult because the ship was resting on the seabed at a depth of 50 metres, which limits the amount of time divers can be underwater, said fire rescue spokesperson Luca Cari.
In the meantime, survivors of the tragedy were taken to various hospitals on the island of Sicily and began recounting their terrifying ordeal.
Among the 15 rescued was one-year-old baby Sofia, who was kept afloat by her mother, 36-year-old Charlotte Golunski.
Ms Golunski, an Oxford graduate and senior associate at Mike Lynch’s company Invoke Capital, yesterday told of her fight to prevent her child from drowning.
‘For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea, then I immediately hugged her again in the fury of the waves,’ Ms Golunski said.
‘I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched up to keep her from drowning,’ she added.
‘It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.’
The British-flagged Bayesian is thought to have arrived in Porticello after a stopping in Milazzo, around 100 miles up the coast towards the Italian mainland
Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who was often referred to as the ‘British Bill Gates’, was on holiday with family when tragedy struck and ‘freak’ waterspout took down his luxury boat
Charlotte Golunski, 36, and her young daughter Sofia were two of 22 people aboard the superyacht when it was battered in a storm before sinking a few hundred metres from the port of Porticello on Monday morning
A survivor leaves the Coast Guard Headquarters after a sailboat sank in the early hours of Monday, off the coast of Ponticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italy, August 19
Italian Coast Guard Command teams and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue operations with helicopters and ships to find missing people after a yacht sank on Monday due to a storm east of Palermo in southern Italy on August 19
Golunski, who yesterday received treatment for a minor shoulder injury sustained in the evacuation, described the experience as ‘terrible’ and detailed how ‘in a few minutes the boat was hit by a very strong wind and sank shortly after… (We were) terrified by the thunder, the lightning, the waves that made our boat lurch.’
She added that her family had survived because they were on the deck when the ship began to sink, rather than trapped in the cabins below.
That is where the five missing passengers – Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley’s Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, one of Lynch’s US lawyers, Christopher Morvillo of legal firm Clifford Chance, and Morvillo’s wife – are believed to have drowned.
Lynch, 59, was once hailed as the UK’s king of technology and is frequently referred to as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’.
He was cleared in June of fraud and conspiracy charges in a US federal trial related to Hewlett Packard’s $11 billion takeover of his company, Autonomy Corp.
The yacht trip appeared to be something of a celebration after Lynch’s acquittal, with guests including members of his legal team as well as friends, family and witnesses who stood by Lynch throughout the trial.
The Bayesian’s hull and the superstructure, the part above the main deck, were made from aluminium
The enormous 246ft-high aluminium mast on Mike Lynch’s superyacht (pictured from above) could have been what caused the vessel to capsize and sink rapidly, according to an expert
Charlotte Golunski, 36, (pictured) her husband and her one-year-old baby also survived
Divers operate in the sea to search for the missing, including British entrepreneur Mike Lynch, after a luxury yacht sank off Sicily, Italy August 19
Karsten Borner, the captain of a ship that rescued the 15 survivors of the Bayesian disaster, told the BBC: ‘After the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone’
Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, 57, was among the 15 people who were rescued from the 180ft yacht.
She revealed that the first sign of the freak waterspout that sunk the luxury sailboat owned by her company Revtom Limited was a ‘slight tilt’ that woke her up.
Speaking to Italian media from a wheelchair last night, Bacares – who needed significant medical treatment for several injuries including lacerations on her feet, a cut eyebrow and bruising across her body – said she was not initially worried until she heard glass shattering.
She got up and left her cabin to see what was happening – a decision that almost certainly saved her life – but within seconds the ship was being battered by the waterspout.
‘Everything was falling, becoming slimy, soaked in the waves that were carrying you away. I managed to get back up, to get out of that cage, but without being able to help…’ she said.
The 15 people who escaped the Bayesian miraculously managed to inflate a life raft and were plucked from the sea by the Sir Robert BP, a Dutch sailing ship which had been anchored nearby and saw the tragedy unfold.
Karsten Borner, the captain of the rescue boat, described how his vessel was battered by strong gusts, with his team working to stabilise it and manoeuvre it to avoid hitting the Bayesian nearby.
Borner told the BBC: ‘After the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone.’
Fisherman Fabio Cefalù said he had seen a flare from shore at around 4.30am and immediately set out to the site but by the time he got there, the Bayesian had already sunk, with only cushions, wood and other items from the superyacht floating in the water.
‘But for the rest, we didn’t find anyone,’ he said from the port hours later, adding that he immediately alerted the coast guard and stayed on-site for three hours, but didn’t find any survivors.
‘I think they are inside, all the missing people,’ he said.
