Antiguan chef Ricardo Thomas has been confirmed as the sole death in a European yacht disaster yesterday.
Thomas, born in Canada to Antiguan parents, had lived in Clare Hall, Antigua, for the past 20 years.
Six others are missing after a luxury superyacht was struck by a violent storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday, officials confirmed.
The vessel, a 56-metre-long British-flagged sailboat named “Bayesian,” went down off the Sicilian capital Palermo with 22 people on board shortly before sunrise, the Italian coast guard said in a statement
A Canadian is among those missing, as well as two Americans and four Britons.
Rescuers will face a ‘very complicated’ search for six missing passengers on a superyacht owned by the ‘British Bill Gates‘ after it sank in a freak storm off the coast of Sicily.
Specialist divers involved in the search operation say the £30million vessel, called the Bayesian, has come to rest on the seabed 164ft (50 metres) below the surface with ‘virtually everything intact’, with furniture blocking attempts to get inside.
The luxury yacht capsized early on Monday morning after being hit by a waterspout at around 5am, with the captain of the doomed vessel saying ‘we didn’t see it coming’ after he and 15 others were rescued from the water.Those involved in the rescue efforts have compared the incident to the ‘Costa Concordia disaster on a smaller scale’, adding that they would do ‘everything to recover the bodies’ amid worsening weather conditions.
Tornado-speed winds flipped the superyacht so quickly there was no time for those on board to raise the alarm or call for help before they were left swimming for their lives, with those who made it off stranded in the pitch black water as the storm raged around them.
The ship’s chef Ricardo Thomas was found dead in the sea by search teams yesterday and hopes that survivors will be found alive in trapped air pockets are rapidly fading as the rescue operation continues.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo who represented Mr Lynch in a recent legal battle and his wife Neda, have been named missing.
Mr Lynch had invited family and friends onto the yacht to celebrate his ‘second life’ after being acquitted of all charges in a US fraud trial, and in an extraordinary twist his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain – who was also cleared of the charges – has also died after being hit by a car while running in England over the weekend.The luxury sailboat was anchored just a few hundred metres off the coast of Porticello on calm seas when it was suddenly struck by a violent waterspout just before 5am on Monday.
It is believed the ship sank after its mast – one of tallest in the world at an enormous 246ft-high – snapped during the brutal incident and keeled over, taking the hull beyond the ‘down-flooding angle’, according to nautical experts.
Engineer Nick Sloane, who led the salvage operation of the cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2012, told Sky News that despite this there may be a slim chance that there are survivors.
He said: ‘They’ve got a very small window of time to try to find people stuck inside with hopefully an air pocket, and they could be rescued.
‘You’ve got a maximum of two to three days to try to get someone out, so the next 24 hours are critical.
‘If the yacht is on its side, it might have more air pockets than if it’s upright. She’s got quite a large keel, and that will deflect and put her on her side, I’m sure.’
There is precedent for this to happen – in 2013 cook Harrison Odjegba Okene was remarkably rescued three days after his tugboat sank to the bottom of the Atlantic when he found safety in an air pocket.
