The tragic shipwreck of a luxury yacht moored off the coast of Sicily is the latest sign that the Mediterranean is becoming a more dangerous sea to sail in, those who know the waters best have said One man died and six people are still missing, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch , after the Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-ft) sailboat, was hit by a ferocious storm on Monday, sinking in a matter of minutes. The coast guard said bad weather had been forecast, but added that it was more virulent than expected. Some locals spoke of a waterspout, or sea whirlwind, of exceptional force.
“It was a strange thing,” fisherman Andrea Carini told Reuters. The Bayesian was at anchor, its sails down, when the tempest hit, with another yacht moored nearby. Climatologists say global warming is making such violent and unexpected tempests more frequent in a sea used as a summer playground for millions of tourists , including a wealthy few sailing its waters on superyachts.
Luca Mercalli, president of Italy’s meteorological society, said the sea surface temperature around Sicily in the days leading up to the shipwreck was about 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), almost three degrees more than normal. “This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” he told Reuters. The changes in “Mare Nostrum” (Our Sea), as the ancient Romans called the Mediterranean, are also being noticed by experienced skippers such as Massimo Aramu, who runs th.