The Kiwi skipper of a superyacht that sank off Sicily after being hit by a tornado has told Italian media: "We didn't see it coming."
James Cutfield was one of two New Zealanders on board the Bayesian, a 56-meter British-flagged yacht, which went down in the freak storm off Porticello near Palermo early on Monday (local time).
Cutfield and New Zealand lawyer Ayla Ronald were among 15 survivors.
Among those believed trapped in the hull include tycoon Mike Lynch, who was once hailed as Britain’s king of technology and was cleared in June of fraud and conspiracy charges in a US federal trial related to Hewlett Packard’s $11 billion takeover of his company, Autonomy Corp.
One person is confirmed dead — on-board chef Recaldo Thomas — and six are missing.
As the search for six missing passengers continues, Italy's Coastguard says there's little hope of finding anyone alive. (Source: 1News)
The sailboat is around 50m underwater after it was understood to have been struck by a freak weather event.
Cutfield told La Repubblica from a hospital that, "we didn't see it coming".
Ronald, a lawyer working in London for Clifford Chance, was on board as part of celebrations over Lynch's recent court victory. Her partner Matthew Fletcher also survived.
"We are in shock and deeply saddened by this tragic incident," Clifford Chance said in a statement.
"Our thoughts are with our Partner, Christopher Morvillo, and his wife Neda who are among the missing. Our utmost priority is providing support to the family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who together with her partner, thankfully survived the incident. Our thoughts extend to the other passengers and crew and all those affected."
Ronald's father Lin told 1News yesterday his daughter was "recovering" from the ordeal.
'A great, great tragedy' — ambassador
Among the survivors were a mother who reported holding her one-year-old baby over the waves to save her.
“It's a great, great tragedy,” said Britain's ambassador to Italy, Edward Llewellyn.
Britain sent four investigators to the scene, given the disaster involved a British-flagged ship and British citizens were among the missing.
Fire rescue officials have said the six other passengers will be considered missing until they are located in the wreckage.
Also unaccounted for were Morvillo, one of Lynch’s lawyers, and Jonathan Bloomer, a chairman at Morgan Stanley International and the former head of the Autonomy audit committee who testified in Lynch’s defence.
Karsten Borner, the captain of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, which rescued the 15 survivors who managed to get into a lifeboat, said he was close enough to be able to see the Bayesian as the storm came in.
“A moment later, she was gone,” he said. “They said they went flat on the water and were sunk in two minutes," Borner added, quoting the survivors.
The rotating search teams, each made up of two specialized cave divers, worked Tuesday to open up access points to get inside the wreck. They were using a remote-controlled underwater vehicle, or ROV, to help in the search.
The divers hadn't been able to access the below-deck cabins because they were blocked by furniture that had shifted during the violent storm. Rescue crews said they assume the missing six are in those cabins because the storm struck when most would be sleeping, but the teams haven't verified their presence there through portholes.
Luca Cari, a spokesman for the rescue teams, said the search was proceeding much more slowly than another big shipwreck in Italy, the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship that flipped on its side off Tuscany's coast, because of the depth of the wreck and the limited space divers have to manoeuvre.
“That was much simpler. Here everything is more tight," he said.
Missing man 'like a brother' — colleague
The outing was intended at least in part as a celebration of Lynch’s acquittal and a “looking forward to what was coming next,” said Reid Weingarten, a Washington attorney and a member of Lynch’s defence team who was not on the yacht.
“A lot of people went, a lot of people were planning to go and then of course this happened,” Weingarten said.
Some of the people who stood by Lynch throughout the ordeal were on board, including Morvillo, the lawyer, who Weingarten worked with and said “was like a brother.”
Aki Hussain, CEO of international insurer Hiscox Group, where Bloomer, the witness, was chairman, said the company was “deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event.”
“Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our Chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing, and with their family as they await further news from this terrible situation,” he added.
Emslie family all released from hospital
Among the survivors, the Emslie family was released from Palermo's paediatric hospital where little Sofia had been kept overnight after her rescue. Her mother, Charlotte Golunski, had reported that she momentarily lost hold of the one-year-old in the water but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, doctors said.
The father, identified by ANSA news agency as James Emslie, also survived.
“They don't talk much, primarily because they consider themselves survivors and they don't understand why they survived given what they went through,” said Dr Domenico Cipolla, head of the emergency room at Di Cristina paediatric hospital.
Speaking to reporters, Cipolla said Golunski had reported that she and the baby were sleeping in the cabin and suddenly found themselves in the water, where they also found Emslie who had been in a different part of the ship. Cipolla said the parents had been in touch with other survivors, who are being housed at a nearby hotel and were waiting for other family members to arrive in Sicily.
The baby slept well overnight and all were released after final checks, he said according to a videotaped interview posted on Palermo Today, adding that psychologists had been made available.
Among the other survivors was Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares. Hannah Lynch, reportedly the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, is among the missing.
The yacht’s registered owner is listed as Revtom Ltd., according to online maritime database Equasis. Bacares is listed as Revtom’s sole owner, according to corporate registration documents from the Isle of Man.
Its name, Bayesian, may be a reference to “Bayesian Inference,” one of the two main approaches to statistical machine learning and the one that was used by Lynch’s company.
The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, was carrying 12 passengers and 10 crew. According to online charter companies, it had been available for charter for $353,000 a week and was notable for its massive 75-meter-tall aluminum mast, one of the tallest in the world.
The coast guard said to date there was no trace of fuel leaks from the wreckage.
In an unrelated event, Lynch's co-defendant in the Autonomy trial who was also cleared, Stephen Chamberlain, was killed Sunday when he was hit by a car while running in Cambridgeshire, England, said Chamberlain's lawyer, Gary Lincenberg.
— additional reporting by Associated Press
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