Mike Lynch, Five Others Missing After Yacht Sinks Off Sicily

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and five others are missing after a yacht owned by the Lynch family sank off the coast of Sicily in a freak storm.

Lynch had been hosting an event for staff aboard the yacht Bayesian, according to British media reports.

The yacht was named after Lynch’s research in Bayesian probability theory, which was the basis of his work in technology.

Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares and 14 other people, including a 1-year-old girl, were rescued aboard a life raft after the yacht sank around 4:30 a.m. on Monday.

Survivors

One body recovered from the area was identified as the vessel’s cook by Italian media.

Six others were unaccounted for and were believed to be inside the hull, the Italian fire rescue service said.

Eight of the 15 people rescued and taken ashore at Porticello, where the Bayesian had been moored, were hospitalised and the others were taken to a hotel.

One of the survivors, Charlotte Emsley, said she momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter Sofia in the water, but managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated.

The girl’s father, James Emsley, also survived, Italian authorities said.

Eyewitnesses said the yacht heeled, or tipped onto its side, in the extreme weather until it began taking on water.

The Bayesian “went flat on the water, and then down”, Karsten Borner, the captain of a nearby vessel, told journalists.

Freak storm

The yacht was known for its enormous 75-metre mast, the tallest aluminium mast in the world, according to Perini Navi, the firm that built the vessel in 2008.

According to website shipspotting.com the vessel is owned by Revtom Limited. Revtom names as its sole shareholder Lynch’s wife Bacares.

The storm followed weeks of scorching heat that have raised the temperature of the Mediterranean sea to unusual levels, increasing the risk of extreme weather, experts said.

A tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, struck the area overnight, Sicily’s civil protection agency said.

The agency’s Salvo Cocina told Associated Press that the Bayesian appeared to have been “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, noting that another large yacht nearby was not as badly damaged and helped rescue the survivors.

Lynch, known as the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of Britain, has spent much of the past decade defending his name.

In June a jury in San Francisco cleared him of fraud charges he had faced over the $11bn (£8.6bn) sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

Fraud acquittal

Lynch had faced one count of conspiracy and 14 counts of wire fraud in the trial for allegedly trying to inflate the company’s revenues beginning in 2009, partly in order to lure a buyer.

The trial had lasted 11 weeks, and saw Lynch take the stand to testify in his own defence.

The jury acquitted Lynch on all 15 felony counts facing him, that could have resulted in a 20 year prison sentence if found guilty.

“I am elated with today’s verdict and grateful to the jury for their attention to the facts over the last 10 weeks,” Lynch said at the time.

“I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field.”