Skipper of yacht in fatal Mallorca accident in court

The lawyer for the skipper of the yacht ‘La Luna’ spoke to the media at the end of his client’s statement. “The witnesses who have testified so far have said that they saw him some 400 metres away from the group of boats that were fishing. 400 metres is the length of four football pitches, it’s a long way, isn’t it? There’s no way you can say he was sailing recklessly.”

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Yacht that caused Cala Bona fatality was travelling at excessive speed

The lawyer added that the boat in which the victim, Guiem Comamala, was sailing with his uncle and his cousin, had no lights on. “It’s a disgrace,” he stated. “You can’t criminalise behaviour for the sake of it.” The accident occurred around ten o’clock at night on 23 August in the waters off Cala Bona. Dennis Viehof was sailing with a group of friends on board his father’s 20-metre luxury yacht, ‘La Luna’, and flying the German flag, when, off Cap Pinar, it ran over the small boat in which Guiem was fishing with his uncle and his cousin.

The victim, who died instantly after being hit by the propellers, was in the area of the outboard motor and the other two occupants were unharmed. “The yacht was travelling at full speed, we screamed like crazy”, the young man’s uncle told Última Hora the day after the accident.

The investigators from the Guardia Civil concluded that Dennis Viehof was sailing at an “excessive speed” in an area where there was a high concentration of fishing boats and that in the accident there was a possible concurrence of responsibility between the skippers of the two boats involved.