A British mother who survived the sinking of a yacht off the coast of Sicily has recounted the harrowing moment she held her baby girl above the water to save her from drowning.
The mother, identified locally as Charlotte Golunski, was on board the luxury yacht Bayesian with her partner and one-year-old daughter when the vessel sank early Monday morning. They are among the 15 people who were rescued from the yacht.
Tragically, six others, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, remain missing. One man was found dead near the wreckage.
The 56-meter (183-foot) yacht, carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers, sank half a mile off the coast of Palermo after being caught in a severe overnight storm that produced waterspouts—rotating columns of air over the sea.
Charlotte told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that her family survived because they were on deck when the yacht went down. She described being awakened by “thunder, lightning, and waves that made our boat dance,” saying it felt like “the end of the world” before they were thrown into the water.
“For two seconds, I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly grabbed her amid the fury of the waves,” she was quoted as saying.
Charlotte recalled holding her baby “with all my strength, arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.”
“It was pitch black. In the water, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help, but all I could hear were the screams of others,” she added.
A lifeboat inflated, allowing 11 people to climb aboard. Charlotte, her partner, and their daughter were unharmed and were taken to a hospital for check-ups.
Karsten Borner, the captain of a nearby boat, said his crew rescued some survivors from a life raft, including three who were seriously injured. He described how quickly the yacht sank, telling the Italian news outlet Rai that it tipped to its side and went down within “a few minutes.”
“It all happened in such a short time,” he said.
A local fisherman, Giuseppe, told Reuters that he was on a motorboat when he saw “mats and T-shirts floating in the sea.”
Another witness, Fabio Cefalù, the captain of a trawler, said he was preparing for a fishing trip when he saw flashes of lightning and decided to stay in the harbor.
“At about 4:15 a.m., we saw a flare in the sea,” he said, according to reports from the EVN news agency.
“We waited for the waterspout to pass. After 10 minutes, we went out to sea and saw cushions and other debris from the boat floating. But we did not see any people in the water.”
Another fisherman described witnessing the yacht’s final moments.
Speaking to the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, he said he was at home when the storm hit. “Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very big,” he recalled.
Shortly afterward, he went down to the Santa Nicolicchia bay in Porticello, a fishing village near Palermo where the disaster occurred, to get a better view.
“The boat was still floating, then all of a sudden it disappeared. I saw it sinking with my own eyes,” he added.
