Sicily yacht sinking: Five bodies found on sunken luxury yacht as one person remains missing

The fire service dive team in Porticello, Sicily, on the third day of the search for six tourists missing after the luxury yacht sank in a storm on Monday. Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Five bodies have been found inside the wreck of a luxury yacht that sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily but one person remains missing, officials have said.

Salvatore Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, told the PA news agency that searches have finished for the day on Wednesday and will resume on Thursday morning.

He confirmed that of the five bodies found, only four had been recovered, and the whereabouts of the missing sixth person remains unknown.

Three body bags were seen being taken to the port of Porticello on Wednesday afternoon following the sinking of the yacht at around 5am on Monday.

The head of Sicily’s civil protection agency Salvatore Cocina confirmed two bodies had initially been found, followed by two more later in the afternoon.

Rescue officials have been looking for six missing people, including tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International.

The identities of the victims found on Wednesday were not immediately given. One of the bodies belonged to a heavily built man, a source close to rescue operations said, while another was that of a woman, Italian news agency Adnkronos said.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-ft) superyacht, was carrying 22 people, and was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it capsized during a fierce storm on Monday.

Fifteen people survived, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.

Mike Lynch is one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and has been referred to as the country's Bill Gates.

Inspection of the wreck, lying sideways at a depth of around 50 metres, was a "long and complex" operation, the Italian fire department said, with inside spaces obstructed by furniture and debris, and scuba divers having just 8-10 minutes beneath the water before needing to resurface.

Separately, the coast guard deployed a remotely operated vehicle to scan the seabed and take underwater pictures and videos that it said may provide "useful and timely elements" for prosecutors looking into the disaster.

The coast guard has been questioning survivors, including the captain of the Bayesian, and passengers on the yacht that was moored next to it who witnessed the ship going down, judicial sources said.

No one is under investigation at the moment, sources added.

Mr Lynch, 59, is one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and has been referred to as the country's Bill Gates. He has links to Ireland — his mother was from Tipperary and his father was from Cork.

He built the UK's largest software firm, Autonomy, which was sold to HP for $11bn (€10bn) in 2011, after which the deal spectacularly unravelled with the US tech giant accusing him of fraud, resulting in a lengthy trial. Lynch was acquitted on all charges by a jury in San Francisco in June.

The other missing passengers were Bloomer's wife Judy, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo. Morvillo represented Lynch in the San Francisco trial, while Bloomer was a character witness on his behalf.

Experts have been at a loss to explain how a large luxury vessel, presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features, could have sunk within minutes, as recounted by witnesses. The yacht anchored next to it was unharmed by the tempest.

The Bayesian, which was owned by Lynch's wife, was built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008 and last refitted in 2020. It had the world's tallest aluminium mast, measuring 72 metres, according to its makers.

Bayesian: The luxury vessel that capsized and sunk off the coast of Sicily. Picture: costanostrayachtsupply.com/PA Wire

Its captain James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealander who survived the shipwreck, was a "very good sailor" and "very well respected" in the Mediterranean, his brother Mark told The New Zealand Herald.

Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, a UK-based non-profit organisation that trains sea rescuers, said the Bayesian was the victim of a "high impact" weather-related incident.

"If it was a water spout, which it appears to be, it's what I would class as like a 'black swan' event," he told Reuters, referring to a rare and unpredictable phenomenon.

He said he was confident the authorities would "get to the bottom" of what caused the shipwreck, thanks to the accounts of survivors, witnesses and examination of the sunken hull, which did not show any apparent signs of damage.

• Reuters