A Canadian man was killed when his luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily early Monday after being hit by an unexpected and violent storm, local authorities said.
The 56-metre, British-flagged sailing ship, the Baisian, was carrying 22 people and was caught in severe weather while anchored off the coast near the port of Porticello, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.
Witnesses said the superyacht disappeared beneath the waves quickly just before dawn, with 15 people on board, including a one-year-old girl, managing to escape before it sank.
The Palermo Port Authority told CBC News that authorities had found the body of Thomas Recardo, a Canadian-born man who had been living in Antigua and was the ship’s crew cook.
The BBC and Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica reported the Canadian’s name as Ricardo Thomas.
Canada’s foreign ministry said it was “aware of reports” that a Canadian national had died.
“Our hearts go out to all those affected by this tragic incident,” the statement said.
Six people were reported missing after the sinking, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter, and Jonathan Bloomer, president of Morgan Stanley International, according to La Repubblica newspaper.
The Italian coast guard said the missing were of British, US and Canadian nationality.
“The ship behind me has disappeared.”
“The winds were very strong. We had expected bad weather but we didn’t know it would be this bad,” a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo told Reuters.
Of the 15 people rescued, eight were taken to local hospitals, where local media said they were all in stable condition.
One survivor, Charlotte Emslie, said she briefly held her one-year-old daughter, Sophia, out of the water but then managed to hoist her above the waves until a lifeboat inflated and pulled them both to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, citing the mother.
Her father, James Emslie, also survived, Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil defense service said.
British tech billionaire Mike Lynch, pictured outside a San Francisco courthouse in March, was one of six people who went missing when his yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily during a severe storm. Lynch was reportedly the owner of a superyacht named the Bayesian. Thomas Recardo, a Canadian who lived in Antigua but worked as a cook on board, died in the accident. (Michael Liedtke/Associated Press)
The captain of a nearby ship told Reuters he started his engines when the storm hit to keep control of his vessel and avoid colliding with the Baysian.
“We managed to hold the ship in place and after the storm passed we noticed that the ship behind us had disappeared,” Karsten Borner told reporters.
Crew members later found several survivors in a life raft, including three seriously injured people, and loaded them onto the raft before the Coast Guard rescued them.
WATCH | Captain talks about rescuing yacht passengers:
“The boat behind us has disappeared,” says captain who rescued yacht passengers
Carsten Borner describes how he witnessed the British-flagged luxury yacht “Bayesian” capsize after sinking off the coast of the Sicilian capital, Palermo, during an unexpected and violent storm, and then rescued several passengers.
Mother saves her one-year-old daughter
The Baysian was built in 2008 by the Italian shipyard Perini.
According to an online yacht specialist, the luxury vessel will have an aluminum hull and can accommodate 12 guests and up to 10 crew members.
WATCH | Boaters talk about extreme weather:
‘It was a disaster’: Sailor describes storm that capsized luxury yacht
Karsten Borner, captain of a ship sailing through the same storm that capsized a luxury yacht off the coast of Palermo, Sicily, describes the violent weather and its aftermath.
Kosina, of the civil defense agency, said the boat belonged to Lynch, but British media reported it belonged to his wife, Angela Bakares. Bakares was among those rescued, but it was not immediately clear whether she required hospital treatment.
Lynch, 59, is one of Britain’s best-known tech entrepreneurs. Building on his groundbreaking research at Cambridge University, he founded Autonomy, Britain’s biggest software company. In 2011 he sold it to HP for billions of dollars, but the deal spectacularly collapsed after the acquisition and the US tech giant accused Lynch of fraud.
Lynch spent much of the past decade defending his reputation in court and, after more than a year under effective house arrest, was acquitted by a San Francisco jury in June.
Lynch’s doctoral thesis and the software that made his fortune were based on Bayes’ mathematical theories.
Divers discover wreckage
The Coast Guard said divers were examining the wreckage of the Baysian, which lies 150 feet (49 meters) below sea level.
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have launched an investigation to look into what went wrong.
Weeks of extreme heat have battered Italy in recent days with storms and heavy rains, and experts say temperatures in the Mediterranean have risen to record levels, raising the risk of extreme weather.
“Sea surface temperatures around Sicily are around 30 degrees Celsius, nearly three degrees warmer than normal, which creates a huge source of energy that contributes to these storms,” meteorologist Luca Mercari said.
“We can’t say that this is all due to global warming, but we can say that it is having an amplifying effect.”
This photo taken from a video released by the Italian Coast Guard on Monday shows rescue efforts off the coast of Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy, where the Basian sank early Monday. (Italian Coast Guard/AP)
According to the ship-tracking app Vessel Finder, the vessel left the Sicily port of Milazzo on August 14 and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with its navigation status listed as “at anchor.”
A British Foreign Office spokesman said British authorities were in liaison with local authorities about the capsizing and stood ready to provide consular assistance to any British nationals affected.