Well Katja Chicken is one of the survivors but the chef won't be cooking tonight after his body was found...still no sign of the owner.
Luca Mercalli, president of Italy’s meteorological society, said the sea surface temperature around Sicily in the days leading up to the shipwreck was about 30 degrees Celsius, almost three degrees more than normal. Karsten Borner, the captain of a boat that was moored alongside the Bayesian but escaped harm, said Monday’s storm had been “very violent, very intense, a lot of water and I think a turning system like a tornado”. “The water is ... way too hot for the Mediterranean and this causes for sure heavy storms, like we had one week ago on the Balearics, like we had two years ago in Corsica and so on.”
One of those suggesting an extraordinary coincidence of different circumstances, all occurring in rapid succession, is the celebrated yachtsman and author Skip Novak, a well known figure in ocean racing who has sailed extensively in Arctic and Antarctic waters. Novak told the Guardian: “My theory with what little is out there is when the mast broke - an incredible thing in itself - that went over the side and that weight, combined with the side wind, and combined with the anchor holding caused an extraordinary lever to increase the heeling moment. “All that combined put her on her side. Then those big side windows blew out and/or an open aft deck to the interior and she flooded in a jiffy. Hard to imagine what else it could have been.”
If you were on deck you stood a chance, it seems to me. If not, you were in bad trouble.
