Yep! It's now official - finally! The Irwin "Queequeg" is now officially ours. It has taken since May 7 to get this all sorted out.
When I first took possession of Queequeg, I noticed that the hull number on the Canadian paperwork wasn't a valid hull number. It didn't have enough digits. So I took a pencil tracing of the hull and oops! That number didn't have enough digits and even had one digit that was different from the Canadian paperwork. Ugh. So I checked the old US Coastguard documentation and found yet a different number with the right number of digits, but still one digit didn't match the actual number on the hull.
So...when I went to the Tax Collector to register the boat, they wouldn't let me because of the hull number mixup. I had to get an officer from the Fish and Wildlife Commission to come out to the boat and do an inspection. Even he couldn't sort the numbers out. He said he would take copies of everything and send a report to the state capital in Tallahassee to see if they could sort it out.
Finally, last week, I got the letter from Tallahassee with a hull number on it, but it said that I would have to jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops to show proof of ownership. Well, it's now all sorted out. I went to the Tax Collector today and was waited on by a young lady named Sandra who was very patient. She listened to my tale of woe, looked at all the paperwork I brought and took everything to her supervisor. When she came back she was smiling. She typed a few things into the computer, wheels started turning and Voila! A registration sticker and document came rolling out of the printer. The title should be here in 10 days or so.
As the Grateful Dead said years ago "What a long strange trip it's been!"
