Update about that big yacht in Milwaukee — it's part of the Richard DeVos fleet

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We have an update to Sunday's item about SeaQuest, the giant motor yacht docked in Milwaukee.

The boat doesn't belong to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick, but to his father, Richard DeVos, and his wife, Helen, according to a spokesman for Dick and Betsy's DeVos' Grand Rapids, Mich.-based private investment management firm.

Greg McNeilly, chief operating officer of Windquest Group, said many people confuse Richard, the co-founder of Amway, and his son Dick. He provided the original 2008 bill of sale for the boat, from the manufacturer to RDV International Marine Limited, and a document transferring the only other share in RDV to Richard M. DeVos years earlier.

SeaQuest, a yacht owned by the family of U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is docked at Discovery World in Milwaukee. The DeVos family, headed by her father-in-law and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos was ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the 88th richest in America with net assets of $5.4 billion.

Various sites that track the manufacture, sale and movements of so-called superyachts, list Dick and Betsy DeVos as its owner. When asked Sunday if Betsy DeVos was aboard the boat and planning any Wisconsin appearances, a Department of Education spokesperson said she was not and did not, that at some other family must be using the boat.

McNeilly said Monday that Betsy DeVos keeps an "iron curtain" between her duties as a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet and her private life, and that government officials in her department likely had no idea who actually owned the SeaQuest.

He said Dick and Betsy DeVos never bothered to try to correct other internet sites but reached out to the Journal Sentinel because many other news and opinion outlets were citing her supposed ownership of the yacht after Sunday's item.

Websites that track yachts show the SeaQuest arrived in Milwaukee on Saturday and had spent last week at Harbor Springs, in the far northwestern corner of Michigan's lower peninsula.

According to several sites, the SeaQuest sleeps 12 guests in six cabins, and a crew of 12 in six more cabins. It was built by Westport in Port Angeles, Wash., and delivered to the DeVoses in 2008. It is registered in the Cayman Islands.

It was only the latest in a fleet of Westport yachts purchased over the years by Richard DeVos, 91, who has also owned a large racing sailboat.