Madoff’s Runabout heads to the Island

Stan Church hopes to keep Madoff’s Sitting Bull, soon to be Matador, at his dock in Coecles Harbor.

Once a modest part of Bernie Madoff’s ill-gotten fortune, a Shelter Island Runabout is making the long trek back to Coecles Harbor, the place where it was originally constructed.

After serving as the Ponzi schemer’s classy ride in the waters near his Montauk home, the 2003-model Runabout was seized by federal agents on April 1, 2009 during Mr. Madoff’s criminal investigation. The boat was turned over to National Liquidators and trucked down to their headquarters in Fort Lauderdale for federal auction.

Stan Church, a Ram Island resident, found out about the auction through Coecles Harbor Marina, the boatyard that constructs the Runabouts. Mr. Church headed down to Florida in hopes of purchasing the elegant vessel.

“It was an event,” said Mr. Church. “I counted 150 white plastic chairs set up, and they filled those and the surrounding area with people.” Many of those people were qualified bidders, he said, but most were there looking for a bargain. Mr. Church, however, simply wanted to take advantage of the chance to get a Runabout. “They’re very expensive because they’re built by hand, so one turns up perhaps maybe once a year.”

He bid fair market value for the 38-foot boat, $320,000, and won. It will soon be trucked from Florida all the way back to Shelter Island.

Among the other seized items sold at the auction were two of Mr. Madoff’s other boats, a 55-foot Rybovich, Bull, (which sold for $700,000) and a 19-foot Maverick center console, Little Bull, (which sold for $21,000), as well as his CLK Mercedes that brought in $30,000.

Mr. Church’s decision to bid on the boat had less to do with the fact that it once belonged to Mr. Madoff and much more to do with his long-standing admiration for the Runabout. “I watched them go by my house,” he recalled, describing when the boats were first being built. “They would go racing by for their test runs, one by one — they would go in and out of the harbor and we would dream about having one one day.”

There’s little to show that the boat once belonged to Mr. Madoff. Unlike the 55-foot Rybovich, Bull, which had embroidered towels, cups and even napkins, the only remnants of the swindler’s ownership are the documentation papers (which actually named Mr. Madoff’s wife, Ruth, as the owner) and the boat’s name: Sitting Bull.

But even the name will soon be gone, says Mr. Church. “Maybe we’ll call it Ponzi,” he joked, “but if I call it Ponzi people will be throwing tomatoes at me.” He did eventually settle on a fitting name for one of the last bits of Mr. Madoff’s fraudulent empire: “Every one of his boats had a name that tied in with ‘bull’ … so we decided to end the ‘bull’ names — we’re calling it Matador.”

Mr. Church plans to use the Runabout to cruise around the Island with his family and take trips to Block Island. He’s been a weekend and summer resident since he discovered Coecles Harbor in 1979. “I pulled in on a small sailboat I had at the time and I never left.” He comes out to the Island from his Manhattan home every chance he gets, he says.

Mr. Church is excited about taking the boat on its maiden voyage. But first, he said with a chuckle, “I’m going to disassemble all the furniture and wood paneling to see if there’s any money in there.” If there is, he added, “of course, I’m going to give it to the marshals.”