There is news this morning coming out of Europe, where it appears the 97-foot motoryacht Lady Candida caught fire and sank during a charter with 12 guests–including four children–off the coast of Corsica. All the guests, as well as the crew, escaped the fire and are apparently safe onshore.

Initial reports do not reveal the cause of the fire, which investigators are apparently still trying to determine. The yacht was built in 1973 by Benetti, an Italian shipyard, and has been available for charter for quite some time. She underwent an extensive refit during the past three years to upgrade her systems and guest areas. Her most recently published base rate is $51,000 per week plus expenses.

This is the first time in recent memory that I’ve heard of any emergency of this severity befalling a private yacht during a charter. I’m contacting the yacht’s management company in an attempt to get additional information before posting any more comments about the sinking here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Charter Yachts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.