A mother has told how she saved her 1-year-old baby from drowning after a $39 million superyacht sank beneath the waves off the coast of Sicily.
For a moment, Charlotte Golunski said she lost her grip on her daughter, Sophie, in the heavy seas after the yacht capsized in a freak waterspout.
But then the desperate mother grabbed back hold of the terrified baby and held her above the water until help arrived.
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“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning,” Golunski, 35, told Italian newspaper Republica. “It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”
The Oxford graduate, a senior associate at Invoke, was among the guests on board the Bayesian superyacht owned by tech titan Mike Lynch, who is among the six people missing after the storm.
She said she could “still hear her little girl crying in her ears as they floated in the waves and their holiday sailboat sank.”
“For two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately held her again in the fury of the waves. I held her tightly, tightly to me, while the sea was raging. So many were screaming. Fortunately, the lifeboat inflated and 11 of us managed to get on it,” Golunski told the local newspaper Giornale Di Sicilia.
She was speaking from the Giovanni di Cristina pediatric hospital in Palermo. Incredibly, the little girl escaped without a scratch, while her mother needed several stitches in a chest wound.
Her husband, James, also survived and was treated at another Palermo hospital. The family was due to be reunited later on Monday. James’ first question to his wife on the phone was: “How is the little girl? Is she there with you?”
The Telegraph reported Dr. Domenico Cipolla, head of the emergency room at the children’s hospital, telling local news media: “She [Charlotte] told me that while they were sleeping, at a certain point the yacht overturned due to the tornado, and they found themselves in the water. Some of them immediately managed to get onto the lifeboat. And some, evidently, didn’t make it.
“She told me that she was in the water for no more than two, three seconds, and she managed to save the baby, to keep her arms up, and then, with the others, they were able to get on the lifeboat, and then, I think, they were rescued by the coast guard.
“They are all in good condition. We managed to get the parents to talk [to each other] on the phone, all the doctors and nurses were all very moved, also because the little girl is fine, the prognosis is good, and we are carrying out tests just to be careful.”
The tornado-like storm is said to have struck out of nowhere and caught the passengers on board, most of them British, completely by surprise. The boat was still at anchor near the port, say witnesses, who claimed the storm broke the mast, causing it to lose balance and capsize.
A nearby Dutch sailing ship reportedly rescued 15 survivors from the shipwreck.
