It's creative licensing... really.
Back in 2000, Al and I found ourselves to be the proud owners of our first sailing craft, a 1980 Hobie16. I made the deal with the owner to trade my Nikonis camera that had been given to me (and never used by me) for the boat and trailer. We spent a few weeks fixing her up, and registered her.
Then I went to title/tag the trailer. The previous 2 owners had not bothered to title and tag the trailer, so the DMV said I had to find the last owner who had. Enter the $27. useless title search. While I now had the name of the last owner who had bothered to do the right thing, I soon found out that he was nowhere to be found. (Besides, if a stranger called you up and said, "I need your signature on this item that you sold somebody else 15 yrs. ago" would you figure that it was in any way your problem?)
Enter the fix. I found out that the state would not under any circumstance issue me a title/tag to make my trailer legal. However, if I had a "homebuilt" trailer, they would bend over backwards to get me legal (and that's all I was trying to do here) they even sent a DMV guy out to my house to check out the trailer and see that I had proper lights, etc... Boy, that trailer sure looked good with a new coat of paint too!
Now, all of this has a point, and that is that in 2005, Al and I bought a Plastimo 7ft9in dinghy at the Miami boat show. They ran my card and said they would ship in a few weeks. It arrived, sans packing slip or invoice. OK, I have my CC statement. ($450.00 to XXXX Company)
Last summer, a friend gave us a 2hp outboard for that dinghy. Took my CC statement to the agency to register it. No can do! They need a Manufacturers Statement of Origin, or a "real" bill of sale. I saw where this was going.
Went right home, jumped on that agencies website, printed out their bill of sale template, and went to work. I called my husband and told him to meet me at our bank for lunch. In front of a notary, I had him sell me our dinghy, and went right down and got my registration. The hoops through which a person will crawl to simply comply with the law is staggering!
I went home with my sticker and new letters/numbers, and blew the boat up and stuck them on. Next morning I let the air out and my carefully applied compliances peeled/fell off!
Was karma messin' with me? I jumped on a few sailing discussion boards and searched for an answer. I blew up the boat again, and with 5200 and a thick magic marker, successfully completed what I wanted to do all along, just be legal.