2005 capsized Ethan Allen for sale
Boat advertisement lists it as being “completely refitted”
The Ethan Allen, the 40-foot Lake George tour boat that capsized in 2005, drowning 20 of the 47 mostly elderly tourists on board, is for sale.
The wooden boat is listed for $49,900 with a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based yacht broker. It has also been advertised on the “Boat Trader,” boat sales website, describing the Ethan Allen as a “Once Famous Vessel” that “has been completely refitted, new engine, new hard top.”
“It’s out of the water. It’s seriously for sale so I’m looking for an offer,” said John Wickman, a broker with Rick Obey Yacht Sales in Fort Lauderdale.
He said the boat is being stored in Kingston.
A new engine has been installed in the last year. He wasn’t sure if the boat had been used since the 2005 tragedy.
Wickman said the vessel was first offered for sale over the winter. It was first reported this week in The Chronicle, a Lake George and Glens Falls-area publication.
Since that story in the last few days, Wickman said he has received several calls about it.
Wickman said he didn’t think the boat’s history would be a deterrent to potential buyers as long as what happened was explained to them.
He said he believed the vessel capsized because it was topheavy, but it had since received a new top along with a new engine.
The circa-1964 Dyer wooden tour boat was taking 47 people, many retirees and their spouses from Michigan and Ohio, on a foliage tour Oct. 2, 2005, when it capsized.
In a subsequent lawsuit, the courts said it wasn’t clear if the top that was added by Scarano Boat Building in Albany in 1989 led to the capsize. They replaced what had been a canvas top with a wooden one.
Liability claims were later settled, but only after the Ethan Allen’s owner James Quirk, who operates Shoreline Cruises Inc. and an affiliate, mortgaged some of his property.
Quirk’s $2 million liability insurance policy, purchased online, turned out to be phony, since it was backed by nonexistent assets configured by Malchus Irvin Boncamper, an accountant in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.
Boncamper, who later pleaded guilty to federal money laundering charges, was affiliated with the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama.
They were in headlines in 2015 when a consortium of reporters released the Panama Papers, a series of hacked documents showing how the law firm hid fortunes of tyrants, criminals and others from around the world.
The Ethan Allen’s capsizing was depicted in “The Laundromat,” a 2015 Netflix film about Mossack Fonseca.
The lack of liability insurance, which negatively impacted survivors of the drowning victims, was part of the damage the Panama law firm’s dealings did to average people around the world, according to the movie’s thesis.
James Hacker, the Capital Region lawyer who represented the victims, said he had heard that when the vessel was moved from Lake George, the name Ethan Allen was taped over.
“I’d be shocked if it wasn’t renamed and repainted,” said Hacker, who is at the Jones Hacker Murphy law firm.
“The question is has it been retrofitted? Has it been retrofitted effectively if is going to be in New York state?” he said. “It wasn’t inspected adequately the first time.”
Hacker sued state safety and inspection officials, but the Court of Appeals ruled that inspectors were not liable for the vessel’s capsizing.
As to whether the Ethan Allen will be or has been renamed, it remains unclear. But the Boat Broker site included a photo of the vessel with the name Ethan Allen still on it.