The death of British tech magnate Mike Lynch at the age of 59 made headlines around the world last year, not only because of his business stature but because he died when a freak storm capsized his superyacht. Now Wired takes an in-depth look at the whole saga, including Lynch's rise in business thanks to his groundbreaking software and his eventual legal war with Hewlett-Packard. The heart of the piece, however, is the August 2024 storm off Sicily that turned celebration—of a legal victory—into catastrophe. Forecasts called for thunderstorms, but nothing out of the ordinary. Around 4am, however, a "perfect, if unlikely, recipe for disaster" unfolded in the sea and sky, resulting in what's known as a supercell, writes Bradley Hope.
In a matter of seconds, hurricane-force winds pummeled the 184-foot Bayesian, which boasted a single 236-foot aluminum mast, one of the world's biggest. And in the fury of the storm, that mast proved disastrous—it "caught the wind like a lever, and the boat started to heel." At that point, the boat capsized in roughly 15 seconds. Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter, and five others never made it out, while 15 people survived. Hope's story details their harrowing escapes. One factor that helped—the storm that burst upon them so suddenly subsided just as quickly.
As it turns out, the Bayesian was the only yacht in its series to have a single mast, now seen as a critical design flaw that affected its center of gravity. And there's a wrenching irony to that: "This problem might have been noticed earlier except for one other factor: Elite luxury yachts don't have to comply with the same robust safety rules as commercial ones," writes Hope. Read the full story.
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