Lawyer's Chilling Text Revealed After Bayesian Superyacht Sinks
"There are deaths." The chilling text from one of the survivors of the superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily paints a harrowing picture of the night's horrors.
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00:00There are deaths. The chilling text from one of the survivors of the superyacht that sank
00:05off the coast of Sicily paints a harrowing picture of the night's horrors.
00:09On Monday, August 19th, the superyacht Bayesian sank in a freak weather incident.
00:13Caught in what's called a tornadic waterspout, a tornado that moves from land into water,
00:18the Bayesian's nearly 250-foot mast reportedly tilted toward the waterline as the yacht fell
00:23over. Out of the 22 people on board, six have been confirmed dead. The British Bill Gates,
00:28and owner of the Bayesian, Mike Lynch, Chairman of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer
00:33and his wife Judith, Attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife, and chef Riccardo Thomas.
00:38Lynch's daughter Hannah is still missing as of this video,
00:41while the remaining 15 passengers were rescued.
00:44The timing of the disaster couldn't be worse, as Lynch apparently planned the
00:47outing to celebrate a victory in a court case that involved the sale of his company
00:50Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. The prolonged trial, which ended in Lynch being acquitted of all
00:55charges, only finished in June 2024. And so Lynch set out on what he described to a Sunday Times
01:00journalist as a very long holiday. Lynch worked with lawyers from Clifford Chance on the case,
01:05one of whom was present on the Bayesian and survived, senior associate Ayla Ronald.
01:10Ronald hasn't said a lot about the incident, but some of the texts she sent to her father are
01:14chilling. As Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported, she and her partner Matthew Fletcher
01:19woke up at 4 a.m. when the Bayesian's mast started tilting toward the water.
01:23Information about Ronald's experience on the Bayesian comes to us via her father,
01:26Lynn. We don't know Ronald's exact words, only how her father chose to paraphrase them.
01:31He told The Telegraph,
01:32She has only said to me that there are deaths, and she and her partner are alive.
01:36He added that at the time, Ayla hadn't given him many other updates about either the survivors or
01:40the missing passengers, but said,
01:42The only other information I've got is that Ayla's phone is apparently the only one that's
01:45had a battery, and so she's been acting in some fashion as a coordinator with the medics.
01:49More details about the harrowing night came from another survivor, a 35-year-old woman
01:53identified by The Telegraph as Charlotte Galunski, whose account hints at chaos and
01:57terror aboard the Bayesian. She told La Repubblica,
02:00For two seconds I lost my baby in the sea. Then I immediately hugged her again amid the fury of
02:05the waves. I held her afloat with all my strength. My arms stretched upwards to keep her from
02:10drowning. Both made it to safety and were discharged from the hospital Tuesday.
02:14All of them miraculously suffering little to no injuries.
02:18Looking at the Bayesian's layout and its course off the coast of Sicily helps to explain what
02:22happened. According to the BBC, winds were apparently so strong that the captain of
02:26another nearby yacht reported seeing the Bayesian's 246-foot aluminum mast bend and snap.
02:32Chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, Matthew Shank, said that superyachts are
02:36recreational vessels not designed to withstand extreme or punishing weather, no matter how
02:40expensive and high-quality their engineering.
02:43It's what I would class as, like, a black swan event. So we've got this
02:47high-impact but low-probability event.
02:50As far as we can tell at the moment, dramatic winds blew the Bayesian away in the early hours
02:54of the morning on Monday, August 19th. This implies that the Bayesian's sail wasn't furled,
02:59which would have proved a fatal oversight.
03:01As mentioned, 15 individuals, including Ayla Ronald, were successfully rescued.
03:06The BBC reports that survivors and their loved ones are recovering slowly and are still in shock.
03:11No doubt Ronald feels the same, but may have more to say about the disaster as time goes on.