Spawn of Frankenscot: Licensing and Registration

Based on a few unfortunate encounters –– oh, let's give in to the cliché and call them "run-ins*" shall we? –– a few awkward run-ins with The Law, Mr. Linton is not taking any chances with Spawn. At 22 feet in length, even sans an outboard, the boat is supposed to sport those blocky, unstylish Florida registration numbers on the bow. ​

And based on the kerfluffle that marked last year's Everglades Challenge, it seems reasonable to expect the authorities to be examining the competitors with an even sharper focus. It would be disappointing to get a red card for something basic like documentation.

So Captain TwoBeers trundled off through the rain to register his homebuilt craft, toting a handful of receipts and the requisite form.

And was instantly repulsed from the battlements of Fortress Florida.

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The nice lady at the AAA tag-office desk provided additional pages of forms and the list: he'd be needing a title (or in this case an application for a title), as well as a Vessel Statement of Builder (q.e.d.) and –– the big one –– a Certificate of Inspection from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. 

Any fans of Catch-22 among the audience? Joseph Heller wrote about a group of soldiers in WWII just trying to survive their time in the service. The book's title comes from an Air Force rule that says more or less that you aren't required to fly if you are crazy, but if you are attempting not to fly, you are clearly in possession of your faculties.

The phrase has come to mean a double bind. An insurmountable bureaucratic tangle. ​

​That's what I found when turning to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission webpage. Go ahead, check it out, I double dog-fish dare you to find a way to get a Certificate of Inspection for your vessel from that site.

Luckily for Spawn, Captain TwoBeers is not an internet researcher. He is a straight-to-the-point, find-a-phone-book-and-call-them-fellers guy.

Phone book?

​Phone book...because the Fish and Game website, I am proud to announce, doesn't seem to contain a telephone number either. Why would it? There are rules involved in running a bureaucracy, after all. ​

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Using his radical skills with a phone, Captain TwoBeers did reach a human bean –– one ready to dispense advice and information. Even if the next bureaucratic step seems a little (forgive me Florida) Mickey-Mouse: Inspections are done by Fish and Wildlife Officers on their own time.

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On their own time.

Their own. Time.

An officer from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission performing a Vessel Inspection does so on his OWN time?

Truly?

Makes one wonder if we should offer a little sweetener to the poor after-hours moonlighting-to-finish-his-own-damn-job bastid. 

​Probably not. 

*The run-ins to which I refer? There have been a few.
One example? Okay, I don't want to speak unkindly of coppers, but when I got the van-and-trailer rig into the wrong lane on a Tampa Bay Lightning home game-night, one of our friendly finest threatened to put Jeff into jail for the night for moving one of the copper's orange traffic cones. For moving a traffic cone so that I could regain the correct lane –– and by the way, he put the cone back. A night in jail.
Yeah, we are still pretty sure that officer was having an irrational and irritable night. But with a badge and sidearm, bless his angry little civil servant heart.​​