The captain of a boat who helped rescue survivors from a stricken superyacht has described the dramatic last moments of the doomed vessel.
The £14 million Bayesian sank just off the coast of Palermo in Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning, after what is believed to be a tornado struck.
The superyacht was registered to Angela Bacares, the wife of the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch.
There were reportedly 22 people on board, of whom 12 were guests and ten were crew.
Mr Lynch and his eighteen-year-old daughter are currently still missing along with four others, as rescue teams continue to search the area for survivors.
Karsten Borner is the skipper of the Sir Robert BP, which was anchored near the Bayesian when the ferocious storm hit.
He told Italian media that his ship was battered by strong gusts of wind and heavy rainfall, forcing him to anchor up not far from the Porticello port in Palermo.
The Bayesian was said to be already stationed nearby but once the worst of the storm hit it reportedly started to sink as it filled with water.
Borner said: “We managed to keep the ship in position, and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone.”
The captain added that the Bayesian “went flat on the water and then down”.
“There was a light and we saw that the ship was aside and then we saw a triangle. So I think she went back down.”
Borner and his crew then saw a flare fired from a life raft crammed with 15 people inside.
The skipper said he quickly radioed the coastguard, who dispatched boats to help guide the raft to safety.
Four people were injured with three needing hospital treatment, Borner told reporters.
Charlotte Golunski, one of the guests on board, described being woken by thunder and lightning that felt like “the end of the world” before being thrown into the water, holding her one-year-old baby above the waves.
“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” she told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
