Dinghy Registration

Since getting the dinghy last October we really hadn't stayed in one place long enough to worry much about registering it. Some of the states we had been in didn't even require registration, but at some dinghy docks she looked a little naked without some sort of numbers on her. We've now stayed long enough in Florida that we need to register her, so I started down that path between buying starters for the engine.

Given that it's all of 10 feet long when inflated, has a patchwork plywood floor, and weighs less than I did in junior high I didn't think this could be a big deal. I called to find the tax collectors office, walked there, took a number and waited my turn. When I got to the front of the line I was informed by a woman behind the counter that while there was one office, there were two locations, and I was at the wrong one. I walked down the street to the other location of the same office, and in a Monty Python touch the same woman was behind this counter. I'm hoping she drove.

Now that I was in the correct location for the same office she was free to inform me that I did not the required documentation. Since it had never been registered before I needed something called a "Manufacturer's Statement of Origin", something like a birth certificate for a boat. I had not received one with the boat when I received it in Texas, probably because I didn't need one in Texas. 

Now started the fire drill of obtaining this certificate, with a home address in Arizona, for a boat that we had ordered while in Maryland, had delivered in Texas, and had since moved through Louisiana and Alabama, and had now been in Florida a teensy bit past the 90 days allowed. What could go wrong?

Hijinks ensued, but after a little more than a week of back and forth with the West Marine office in California I finally had my MSO, and back to the office with two locations I went. Since I had apparently not suffered enough we went round and round on whether the MSO was valid, which eventually turned on whether the dinghy was West Marine branded, regardless of who had made it and where. Once that was settled I had my dinghy registration.