Free-spirited Buccaneer... entangled in paperwork

Aaaaarr matey! We be making slow way through yon doldrums in ye Sea of Red Tape.

The Buccaneer sloop I picked up the other day took a couple of extra trips to round up parts and paperwork. Installation of an extension to the wiring harness brought illumination to the trailer. But today the fun really began when I tried to register the boat and trailer.

It seemed logical to request a permanent registration permit, which is allowed in New Mexico for small trailers. That's when the motor vehicle clerk discovered the first flaw. The registration paperwork gave a weight for the trailer, but not a capacity number. That meant that a clerk qualified as a vehicle identification number examiner would have to examine the trailer. That would have been easy had it not been for the small detail that the boat and trailer were at home. And the wheels were at a tire shop getting new tires put on them. And the independent motor vehicle office was going to close in about an hour.

Whoosh! I rushed to the tire shop, waited around a while for the new tires to get balanced on the old wheels and counterweighted, then went hope, put the wheels back on the trailer, and went back to the office to get the trailer registered. The VIN examiner did his trailer examining, put in the correct numbers, and got the trailer registered for me.

But that was only half the job, and sure enough when it came time to register the boat, the clerk found another flaw. The original owner had initially donated the boat some years ago to a group that never used or registered the boat, and wound up not wanting it, and so the title form had needed to have the sale date updated. Unfortunately, writing in a new date was not a valid option -- the change would have to be made on a form to be completed by the last registered owner, signed, and notarized. So, I drove twenty miles across town to give the paperwork to the owner, who should mail it all back to me in a few days after completing his portion of the magic paperwork dance.

Once this paperwork is done and the boat is registered, we can then go on to satisfying the paperwork requirements for a municipally-owned Tempe Town Lake mast-up storage lot. It should be interesting. Then maybe some day we'll get to fill in the appropriate forms to race the boat.

Aaaaaarrrrrhh!