At least one person died and six are missing after a sailboat sank early this Monday morning near Palermo, in the island of sicilythe Italian coast guard announced, after reporting the rescue of 15 people.
“This morning at around 05:00 (03:00 GMT), after a violent storma 56-metre sailing ship, named ‘Bayesian’ and flying the British flag, sank off Porticello“, a coastal town located 15 km east of Palermo, the Italian coastguard said in a statement.
On board the luxury vessel There were 22 peopleincluding 10 crew members, the coast guard said. The twelve passengers were mostly britishaccording to Italian media.
Fifteen people were rescued and initially seven people were reported missing, including a crew member and six passengers of British, American and Canadian nationality.
The body of one of the missing persons was found in the wreck of the sailboat, located at a depth of 50 meters, and was recovered. Eight shipwrecked people were taken to local hospitals.
Charlotte, a 35-year-old British passenger, said she lost her one-year-old daughter “for two seconds” in the water before she was recovered.
“I immediately hugged her in the middle of the waves. Many people were screaming. Fortunately, the lifeboat was inflated and 11 of us climbed aboard,” he told the Ansa news agency.
Most of the survivors are British, although there are also two French-British, a Sri Lankan, a New Zealander and an Irishman, media reported.
shipwreck sailboat italy 3.webp
Courtesy of Forbes
The sailboat, according to the media, sank after passing through a waterspouta phenomenon that has been increasingly observed in Europe in recent years.
“We were the first to arrive to help, but we didn’t find anyone in the sea, we only found pillows and the remains of the boat, so we immediately called the port,” Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman who saw the meteorological phenomenon approaching “around 3:30 a.m.,” told AFP.
The Bayesian sailing ship was built in the Italian region of Tuscany in 2008 and restored in 2020, according to the TGCom 24 portal.
This type of sailboat has a main aluminum mast considered the tallest in the world, at 75 meters. Its sails cover an area of 3,000 m².
Authorities have opened an investigationin charge of the judicial authority of Termini Imerese.
Source: Ambito
