A 183-foot luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily was upended by a tornado on Monday. One day later, the disaster is still unfolding, as one person has been confirmed to have died, and six of the 22 passengers on board are presumed now to have perished in the accident, according to recent reports from the Wall Street Journal.
Among the 15 people rescued, a 35-year-old British woman by the name of Charlotte Golunski recounted her harrowing experience. Attributing her survival to being on the deck of the sinking yacht when the storm hit, she described being awoken by lightning and thunder. The storm then threw her into the dark sea. Her caregiving instincts appear to have kicked in after the yacht succumbed to the storm and Golunksi used her strength to hoist her 1-year-old daughter above her head in the churning water to save her from drowning.
Golunski and her family survived the incident, although they avoided disaster by a slim margin.
“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” she told Italian outlet Giornale di Sicilia.
“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open,” she told newspaper La Repubblica. “I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me was the screams of the others.” She was able to take reprieve upon a lifeboat alongside 11 survivors.
Aboard the British yacht known as the Bayesian was also Mike Lynch. Lynch was the one who, in fact, invited Golunski and her family, according to the Washington Post.
Still missing and now presumed dead, Lynch is a tech tycoon and former chief executive of Autonomy who recently made headlines after being acquitted of alleged fraud. Once known as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” Lynch also developed a reputation for railing against Silicon Valley culture.
He was subsequently embroiled in a more than decade-long trial that was once described by a U.S. Investigator as the biggest fraud ever to hit the area, per the Financial Times. Lynch’s lawyer, Clifford Chance senior partner Chris Morvillo, was also on the yacht and now is missing in the group of six. Jonathan Bloomer, Morgan Stanley’s international chairman, was also reported missing and is presumed dead.
Bloomer’s wife, Judy, and Morvillo’s wife, Neda, are also presumed dead, according to the WSJ, along with Lynch’s teenage daughter Hannah. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued.