Witness describes yacht arrest.

WESTBROOK — For much of this summer, Melissa Ozols of Essex has taken her two young children and headed for her in-laws’ home on Stannard Beach in neighboring Westbrook for a day of fun in the sun.

“We’ve been beaching it every day because there isn’t whole lot else we can do,” Ozols said Friday.

But on Thursday, her family’s sun-drenched routine gave her and her in-laws a front-row seat to an incident that by the end of the day had attracted international attention. Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist of President Donald

Trump, was taken into custody on Long Island Sound off of Westbrook coast Thursday morning by law enforcement on federal fraud charges.

Bannon was arrested at 7:15 a.m. after special agents with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and federal postal inspectors, with the help of the Coast Guard, boarded a $30 million, 150-foot yacht belonging to one of his business associates, fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.

“We were about a quarter of a mile from where the ship was, which was southeast of Salt Island,” Ozols said, referring to one of the many small islands that dots Long

Island Sound from Branford to the mouth of the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook.

“At first, we didn’t think anything of it because we were watching the kids and there were not flashing lights (to indicate this was something involving law enforcement),” she said. “But we were curious because it had been out there for so long and boats that big usually don’t come to Westbrook and, if they do, it’s only long enough only to take on fuel on the way to Martha’s Vineyard.”

The mega-yacht that Bannon was on had been off the coast of Westbrook since Tuesday afternoon, according to other Westbrook residents and boat owners who spoke with Hearst Connecticut media.

Ozols, who grew up in one of the town’s other beach neighborhoods, took a cellphone photo of the yacht and the boat that law enforcement officials had tied to it in order to board the craft. By mid-morning, she had sent a copy of her photo to her husband, Lon Sideman, and asked for his opinion about what was happening.

At that point, word of Bannon’s arrest was filtering out through social media reports from Connecticut media outlets. And that set off a flurry of Facebook posts among the town’s residents, comparing photos they had taken of the boat and sharing stories.

And by noon Thursday, it also prompted a number of people to try to get closer look at the yacht and who was on the boat, Ozols said.

“People were going out in kayaks and on paddle boards and they (law enforcement) kept shooing them away,” she said.

Some people wondered whether Bannon had come ashore while the yacht was moored off Westbrook’s beachfront.

“I doubt it,” Ozols said. “I mean, if he did, where would he go? The drug store? Bill’s Seafood?”

Route 1 runs parallel to Long Island Sound through

Westbrook and is dotted with marinas and seafood restaurants. The manager at Bill’s Seafood, which is located next to the town’s famous Singing Bridge, told Hearst Connecticut Media Thursday that he had no knowledge of anyone visiting from the vessel.

The yacht left the Westbrook area at about 2:30 p.m. sailing west, according to Ozols. The boat now is docked in Bridgeport, according to federal officials and witnesses.

Ozols said that during a lifetime of living in the area, the arrest Thursday qualifies as the biggest thing to happen in the community in decades.

“We’ve had a few people drown who misjudged the current trying to swim out to Salt Island or back,” she said. “That’s about it.”