The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
The Sound on the Bannon fury
Tranquil boating community generally unfazed by arrest
Anyone who spends much time at all out on the sparkling surface of Long Island Sound along the Connecticut coast has one big thing in common, even if they don’t own — or know someone who owns — a 151-foot, $27.9 million “megayacht.”
Whether they access the Sound by power boat, sailboat, kayak or blow-up rubber raft, “I think they have a sincere love for the outdoors and they just want to get out and not be stuck inside,” said Evan Cusson, sales manager for Atlantic Outboard, a boat dealer in Westbrook, which had its latest splash of international fame Thursday.
That happened when members of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and federal law enforcement agents showed up with the Coast Guard to take Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Donald Trump, off said megayacht, the “Lady May,” and charge him with fraud in connection with a fundraising effort.
Bannon was one of four men taken into custody and charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to an online crowdfunding campaign called “We Build the Wall,” which raised more than $25 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. Bannon pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal court in Manhattan.
The magistrate judge approved Bannon’s release on $5 million bail, secured by $1.75
million in assets.
Bannon’s arrest was reported on just about every local newscast, as well as just about every news channel, from CNN to Fox News to MSNBC to the BBC.
Despite the glitz and intrigue of having the feds descend on a megayacht moored in Connecticut waters, lots of folks who are part of the Long Island Sound boating scene aren’t fabulously wealthy, and these days, “people are realizing they can own a boat and be on the water for a few hundred a month,” Cusson said.
But even if they don’t travel in the same social circles as whomever Bannon was cruising with when the feds pinched him, “there were definitely people who were curious,” Cusson said. “They were taking pictures.”
“There were a lot of rumors going on before the arrest about who was out there” on the boat, he said. “There were rumors that it was some sort of Hollywood people.” While not everyone along the coast followed what happened in Westbrook quite that close, most of the people on their boats at Safe Harbor Bruce & Johnson’s Marina on the Branford River in Branford were aware of it on various levels.
Bruce Kuryla, general manager at Bruce & Johnson’s, said that members of the Long Island Sound boating community “share one thing — everybody has a certain love of being on the water. It’s like a spiritual thing,” whether you own an 8-foot raft or a 75-foot yacht.
Thursday’s events were unusual because “that’s just an odd place to be, off of Westbrook,” Kuryla said. “We don’t see a lot of big, big boats in Long Island Sound. They’re usually transiting Long Island Sound for Newport, Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard.” Rachel Amodio of West Haven wasn’t particularly concerned about what was up with Bannon as she sat on her 46-foot power boat, “Second Chance,” soaking up the sun.
“It’s pretty quiet down here. You don’t see much of anything,” said Amodio, who spends much of her summer on the boat with her husband, often sleeping on it. She was there Friday just to relax, with no plans to leave the slip.
Not far away, Marlo, who lives in Orange but didn’t want to give her last name, was taking care of a few things on her 46-foot power boat, “Painkiller” — and while she was aware that Bannon had been picked up in Westbrook, she wasn’t all that wrapped-up in it.
“You come here for peace of mind,” she said.
One of her slip neighbors was more aware of it, and had no sympathy for Bannon.
“He’s an a—,” said the man, who said he lived in Madison but didn’t want to be identified by name. “They should have pulled him off.”
He said he felt he had nothing in common with the megayacht owner Bannon was cruising with.
Even though he owns a pretty good-sized boat in nice shape, many people like him own boats because they can’t afford vacation homes, he said. “This is our vacation,” he said.
But for him, “there’s absolutely a boating culture,” he said. “People who own boats, they are friendly to each other. They wave to each other. It’s like people who own Jeeps.”
For another one of his slip neighbors at Bruce & Johnson’s, there are more important things to worry about than what’s happened Thursday with Bannon.
“I don’t worry about stuff ” and “that is like a one-in-a-gazallion” kind of happening, said the woman, who identified herself as Nancy from Branford. She said she was “just down here to relax, and she was a lot more concerned about “all the young kids on the water who are rafted up during COVID,” with no social distancing.
“I would say the Branford police boats, they’ve done a great job,” she said. “I’m a lot more concerned about that than I am about Steve Bannon.”
A Darien man who was just passing through on his 36-foot sailboat, the “Funny Girl,” which had had some mechanical issues, said he was unaware of what happened with Bannon. “I was out sailing” all day Thursday, he said.
Most boating folks “are all very easy-going. They all share a similar passion,” the man said. “They’re also very nice to each other in case something happens.”
Of course, not everyone with an interest in Long Island Sound even owns a boat.
Sally Cummings, who lives in New Haven and works at Branford River Paddle Sports adjacent to Nellie Green’s Restaurant in the yard of the Branford Landing Marina, said she wasn’t all that interested in what happened with Bannon.
“I just help people on and off kayaks,” said Cummings. “Sometime I wash life jackets.” Her boss, Branford River Paddle Sports owner Marie Martin, asked, “How does it impact me? It’s just one more (allegedly) corrupt politician using someone else’s money . ... How many people own a $25 million yacht, honestly?”
In Bridgeport, right now there’s probably only one. But with the Lady May back in port there again on Friday, docked at Steel Point, it drew plenty of attention.
With a light wind blowing off the water under high clouds at Steel Point, three men coming out of a Friday lunch at Boca Oyster Bar snapped some photos of now-infamous yacht docked at Pier A.
“I didn’t know it was here. We had a very nice lunch, by the way,” said Mark Antonini, born and raised in Bridgeport, joined by Joe Keyes of Trumbull and Bob Hojnacki of Fairfield. “It’s a nice-looking boat. “I read the story yesterday,” he said. “I just thought it was kind of interesting, the way they went in and got him, with the Coast Guard plus — what was it, the Post Office, is that what they said?”
The women at the door to Boca said they hadn’t heard much of a buzz in the restaurant about the Lady May. But outside, it caught some eyes. “It looks like something James Bond would have,” Hojnacki said.
Knia Mathis of West Haven said she’d seen the Lady May on a visit to Steel Point earlier this year and thought it perhaps belonged to the son of the complex’s developer. “That’s an attraction to bring money into Bridgeport,” said her husband, Shawn Mathis.
“Do a tour!” Knia Mathis said.
As the P.T. Barnum sailed behind it from the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry terminal. Knia Mathis laughed that, from a distance, the Lady May didn’t look all that much smaller than the 300-foot ferry boat.
The warm late-summer afternoon brought couples, families, and groups of friends from assorted walks of life to the harbor walk; Knia Mathis led another couple down for a closer look at the Lady May, which sat, along with the piers and the catamarans, beyond a gate.
Is there a perception that the Sound is just for rich people?
“That’s what our daughter just said,” Knia Mathis said. “When I told her about (Bannon’s $5 million bond), she said, ‘who cares. That’s rich people for you, ma.’”
“I’d say, no, it’s actually a community,” Shawn Mathis said.
“That’s what he says,” said Knia Mathis. “Most people I speak to, because we’re coastline, West Haven — that’s the persona, it’s for wealthy, rich people,” she said. But “I beg to differ.”