Ayla Ronald. One person died and six people are missing. Ayla Ronald, a New Zealander working in London as a lawyer survived the capsizing, her father Lin Ronald has confirmed.
Ronald is from Christchurch and studied at the University of Otago, the New Zealand Herald reported. The missing include UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter. Lin Ronald told RNZ his daughter was alive and well, but shaken.
Divers operate in the sea to search for the missing after a luxury yacht sank off Sicily, Italy. Photo: Reuters He confirmed Wall Street Journal reports she had worked on Lynch's long-running fraud case in the US over the sale of his company to Hewlett Packard. The yacht trip was to celebrate Lynch's legal win in the wake of serious charges, including fraud.
Regarding the yacht sinking, Lin Ronald said it was "a very unusual very rapid incident which is very sad for all involved". The luxury yacht was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm and sank off Sicily early on Monday (local time). The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long sailboat, was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.
Eyewitnesses said the yacht vanished quickly beneath the waves shortly before dawn. Fifteen people escaped before it went down, including Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who owned the boat, and a one-year-old girl. The names of the dead and missing were not immediately .