MEZIESBLOG

Media reports have confirmed the identity of British woman who saved her one-year-old daughter from drowning.

Charlotte Golunski, 35, told Italian media she lost Sofia for “two seconds” amid the “fury” of the sea but was able to retrieve her.

She told la Repubblica: “I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.

“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.”

Luckily, she managed to scramble on a lifeboat once it inflated.

The girl’s father James Emsley also survived, according to Salvo Cocina from Sicily’s civil protection agency.

Ms Golunski’s LinkedIn profile says she’s a partner at Mike Lynch’s firm, Invoke Capital, and has worked there since 2012.

Before that she worked at Hewlett Packard for 11 months and studied history at University of Oxford.

‘Stories of people getting caught in air bubbles’

Oceanographer Dr Simon Boxall, from Southampton University, has told the media that the weather window for searching this evening is closing as more storms are forecast.

Despite no more survivors being found since this morning, he said it’s important to continue the search for now.

“There are stories of people getting caught in air bubbles, so it’s worth looking in the vessel, but time will tell,” he said.

Dr Boxall said current warm sea temperatures, 4C above the 20-year average, likely played a role as they can fuel storms and increase the chance of waterspouts.

He said the crew would have known about low pressure and bad weather in the area, but were likely “just caught unawares” by a sudden flare-up in wind speed.

If the storm snapped or damaged the 75-metre mast it “could well have destabilised the vessel”, said Dr Boxall.

He added that, contrary to most people’s idyllic image of the Mediterranean, he’d seen some “horrendous” storms in the region in August.

Crew ‘well known and liked across the industry’

A yachtsman who worked on the Bayesian several years ago has told reporters it’s a “well respected boat and well known in the industry, especially on the Mediterranean and Caribbean circuits”.

He added: “The weather around Sicily can be slightly unpredictable but this does seem to have been an unusually large freak storm. 

“The missing crew members are missing crew members are well known and liked across the industry. 

“We have been nervously waiting for updates since this morning. My thoughts are with all involved during this awful moment.”