UK tech mogul Mike Lynch’s yacht Bayesian was named after a mathematical model for calculating risk.
But no one could have predicted the fate that a pre-dawn storm would bring to the 184-foot sailing ship Monday and the 22 revelers aboard.
Just after 4 a.m., lightning began to flare over the warm waters off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily.
Within minutes, a squall of tornado-like waterspouts pummeled the superyacht where it was anchored in Porticello harbor.
“We didn’t see it coming,” the Bayesian’s captain James Catflield told La Repubblica from a hospital bed Tuesday, hours after the ship sank in 160 feet of water.
Fifteen people — including Lynch’s wife, and a mother and her 1-year-old baby — managed to escape.
Six passengers were still missing as of Wednesday morning local time: Lynch, 59; his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; New York City attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda; and Morgan Stanley exec Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy.
Chef Ricardo Thomas — one of the 10 crew members — was the only known fatality.
Lynch — who was dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates” — had invited his guests onboard the yacht for a grand celebration over his acquittal on multibillion-dollar fraud charges following a federal trial in San Francisco.
Lynch was accused of scheming to increase the valuation of his company Autonomy before he sold it to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion.
After the sale, HP wrote off $8.8 billion from the acquisition and claimed Lynch had cooked the books.
The legal fight lasted a grueling 12 years — and on top of being placed on house arrest for 13 months, Lynch faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The result was stunning. Less than 1% of federal criminal cases end in acquittal.
Morvillo, a 59-year-old partner at a white-shoe law firm, described elation in the courtroom.
“It was this electric moment. I’ve never seen anything like it in a courtroom before,” Morvillo told the legal podcast “For the Defense” just a few days before the Bayesian disaster.
After the acquittal, Lynch’s wife — 57-year-old Angela Baracas — screamed and ran to hug her husband, he said.
“Grown people sobbing, hugging … people clapping, it was remarkable,” Morvillo said, describing an ensuing celebration party “that lasted into the small hours of the morning.”
In an emotional LinkedIn post written after verdict, Morvillo thanked his two daughters and wife for their support throughout the legal battle.
A source at the family’s luxury apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side said they believed Morvillo’s daughters, both in their 20s, were in Italy with their parents but were not on the boat.
Lynch — whose net worth plummeted from $1.1 billion to $650 million over the last year — described getting a new lease on life.
“The question is, what do you want to do with it?” Lynch told the Sunday Times of London in July after the acquittal.
That celebration extended into the summer, culminating in the grand Mediterranean cruise onboard the Bayesian.
But it was shattered Monday morning when the severe squall blasted through Porticello, sinking the yacht in just two minutes — while smaller boats nearby seemed to escape with little damage.
“We waited for this waterspout to pass,” local fisherman Fabio Cefalù told EVN news, recalling how he stayed on shore as the squall blew in, and watched it consume the Bayesian.
“After 10 minutes, we went out to the sea and we saw cushions and all the rest of the boat, and everything which was on the deck, at sea.
“However, we did not see any people in the sea.”
What to know after a tornado sank the yacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily, leaving one dead and six missing:
- A superyacht capsized off the coast of Sicily after a tornado hit the area early Monday, killing one passenger and leaving six others missing — including Michael Lynch, a tech tycoon known as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” officials said.
- Lynch had invited guests from the legal firm that represented him, Clifford Chance, and Invoke Capital, his own company, on the voyage, according to the Telegraph.
- Captain James Catfield, who piloted the 184-foot, British-flagged craft, was among the 15 crew members and passengers to survive after the tornado struck Monday before sunrise.
- Security camera footage shot from 650 feet from where the Bayesian sank Monday shows it slowly disappearing.
- Italian authorities have said the chances of the passengers surviving the disaster were very small, but “never say never.”
Exactly what caused the superyacht to sink remains unknown — but some experts have speculated that the ship’s unusually tall, 240-foot mast may have caused what should otherwise have been a very seaworthy vessel to founder.
The mast may have acted like a sail and pushed the boat onto its side as high winds struck it, Maritime Search and Rescue Council chair Matthew Schanck told the BBC.
Whatever happened, it happened fast, leaving people on board with just moments to save themselves.
“The boat was still floating, then all of a sudden it disappeared,” another fisherman who witnessed the catastrophe told the local newspaper Giornale di Sicilia.
Onboard, Lynch’s wife, Bacares, was shaken awake after the boat sharply “tilted.”
Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that at first she didn’t think anything was wrong, but then she was showered in shattered glass, and sliced her feet scrambling over the debris as she rushed on deck and over the side into the storming sea.
Another passenger, Charlotte Golunski, had gone on deck with her partner, James, and their 1-year-old daughter as the storm kicked up, describing “thunder, lightning and waves that made our boat dance” and seemed like “the end of the world.”
Then they were tossed into the salt water by the tempest.
“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” she told La Repubblica.
“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.”
“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.”
A small inflatable emergency raft was deployed in the chaos as the boat slipped beneath the waves, and the 15 survivors managed to scramble onboard before they were rescued by a nearby boater.
Authorities said the six missing passengers are believed to be trapped in the network of cabins inside the boat — a luxurious space when afloat, but one that has become a claustrophobic trap underwater as furniture, baggage and sailing gear drifts about and blocks the passageways.
Complicating the search is the depth where the wreck rests on its side, which leaves divers no more than 10 minutes at the site before they need to resurface for oxygen.
Nick Sloane, an engineer who worked on the Costa Concordia salvage operation a decade ago, told Sky News that there was a possibility the missing passengers could still be alive — surviving in air pockets left in the wreckage.
He said search teams had “a very small window of time to try to find people stuck inside.” Italian authorities said late Tuesday that the chances of survival were very slim, but “never say never.”
