21.01.2022

Pre­sent­ly Ger­ma­ny does not have a so-cal­led yacht code. Lar­ge yachts fly­ing the Ger­man flag must the­r­e­fo­re com­ply wi­th SO­LAS on the sa­me ba­sis as a Ger­man-flag­ged car­go ship. Gi­ven mo­dern yacht de­signs, for in­s­tance tho­se wi­th low win­dow are­as or spe­ci­fic sta­bi­li­ty ar­ran­ge­ments, com­pli­ance wi­th SO­LAS can be eit­her dif­fi­cult or not fe­a­si­ble.

In 2021, in a ca­se be­lie­ved to be the first of its kind, a su­per­yacht was re­gis­tered in Ger­ma­ny and im­me­dia­te­ly flag­ged back out to a ju­ris­dic­tion ap­p­ly­ing a yacht code. Si­gni­fi­cant in­vol­vement of the va­rious Ger­man ad­mi­nis­tra­ti­ons in­clu­ding the re­le­vant Ger­man mi­nis­try was ne­ces­sa­ry in or­der to ob­tain ap­pr­oval for the flag­ging out. LE­BUHN & PUCH­TA (Ed­ward Ma­gu­in and Dr.  Sa­rah Gah­len, part­ners; Ka­te­ri­na Fast, as­so­cia­te) ac­ted for the suc­cessful ow­ner. One of the broa­der im­pli­ca­ti­ons of the ca­se is that the­re are now wel­co­me pro­s­pects for the im­ple­men­ta­ti­on of a yacht code in Ger­ma­ny.