The Italian coast guard on Thursday said that the body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch, 59, was among those recovered off the coast of Sicily from the wreckage of a superyacht whose builders had called it “unsinkable”. One woman remains missing. She has not been identified, but Hannah, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, is reportedly unaccounted for.
The family was celebrating Lynch’s recent acquittal on fraud charges with the people who defended him at trial in the US. All passengers were his guests. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among the people rescued.
The Bayesian — a 56-metre (185 feet) British-flagged sailing boat — was anchored some 700 metres off Porticello, near Palermo on the north of the Italian island. It was then struck by a waterspout — akin to a mini-tornado, and sank within minutes on Monday. Fifteen of the 22 people aboard, including a mother who was reported holding her one-year-old baby over the waves to save her, were rescued by sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell .
Termini Imerese public prosecutor’s office investigators were collecting evidence for a criminal investigation, which they opened immediately after the tragedy despite no formal suspects having been publicly identified. According to the New York Times, the yacht was anchored on a stretch of water favoured by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago for its protection from the mistral wind and, in more recent times, by the yachts of tech billionaires. The chief executive of The I.