Italian emergency services headed out to sea towards the area off the Sicilian coast on Tuesday, where the search continues for six people missing after a luxury yacht capsized and sank. Photo: Getty Images Divers are continuing to scoured the wreck off Sicily's coast to find six missing people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, following an intense storm that sank the vessel on Monday. The British-flagged Bayesian , a 56-metre-long superyacht, was carrying 22 people and anchored off the port of Porticello when it was hit by the fierce, pre-dawn storm.
Witnesses said the boat disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes, baffling naval experts who said a boat as large as the Bayesian would have been designed to stay afloat for many hours despite taking on water. Fifteen people escaped before it capsized and the body of one person who died was swiftly recovered. That left six passengers unaccounted for - Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo.
However, there was little chance of finding more survivors, rescuers said. "The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel," Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily, said. Ayla Ronald, a Christchurch lawyer working in London, survived the capsizing, her father Lin Ronald confirmed to RNZ.
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