The County Recording Stamp Changed What Felicia Called My Permission Slip

I put Felicia's second envelope beside the first. Inside was a letter telling me to identify my landlord and buy a license before using the ramp again.

There was no hearing date. There was a payment address.

On Monday, I rode the foot ferry across the inlet and took a bus to the county records office in Port Orchard. I carried copies in a dry bag. The originals stayed in my locked tool cabinet.

Waiting for my number, I folded a boat from a blank receipt.

The clerk called me before I finished the bow.

"I'm looking for everything attached to this recording number," I said.

She brought up the index and showed me how to order certified copies. I paid forty-eight dollars for the pages I needed.

The 1986 agreement matched mine. It granted the owners of six named lots a permanent, nonexclusive easement over a twelve-foot strip and the existing launch ramp. The right went with each lot when it sold.

It allowed reasonable shared maintenance costs based on actual work. It did not allow an annual charge for permission to cross.

Another clause covered reasonable costs of enforcing the agreement, including attorney fees. I had barely noticed that line when we bought the place.

Now I underlined it on my working copy.

The association had acquired its waterfront parcel in 2007. Its deed listed the 1986 easement as an existing burden. I ordered that page too.

Back in Bremerton, I called the survey firm that had drawn the harbor map in my folder. The old owner had retired. His records had gone to Tomas Aguilar.

Tomas was thirty-nine, a Mexican American harbor surveyor whose voice sounded as if he had time for everybody.

"I've got the field book," he told me. "But a line on old paper doesn't tell us where that fence sits today."

"Can you find out?"

"Yes. Can I promise you'll like the answer? No."

I liked him for that.

His written estimate was six hundred eighty dollars for the boundary work, a marked plan, and a site visit. I signed it.

Then I called Nina Bell, a lawyer whose office was above a bakery near downtown. She asked me to bring the notices, my deed, and the recorded agreement.

"Do you want to own the ramp?" she asked.

"No. I want to use it."

"Good. Those are different claims."

She read each page with her finger on the lines.

"They own the land under this route," she said. "You hold a recorded right to cross it and use the ramp. They bought their parcel with that right already on it."

"Can they fine me?"

"You're outside their association. Their rules don't become your contract because they pin them to your door. Let me check the full title record before we answer."

Her starting retainer was eighteen hundred dollars. I had hoped this would cost me a bus fare and some copies. I wrote the check anyway.

At home, I took the money from the account I had kept for a new shed roof. The roof could wait through another summer. I called the roofer and canceled his estimate, then wrote that down too. I didn't want my anger growing larger than the real cost, or the real cost getting lost because I was embarrassed by it.

On Tuesday she sent a letter disputing the fine, asking that all threats stop, and requesting the basis for the access charge. It included the recording numbers and offered a meeting at the ramp.

I hand-delivered a copy to the association office.

Felicia stood behind a counter arranging little blue parking tags.

"You hired someone?" she asked.

"To read the papers with me."

She looked at the certified copy.

"An old permission slip doesn't override our current policy."

"It's recorded."

"So are lots of things."

Owen Reed, the board secretary, stopped sorting mail. He reached toward the letter. Felicia slid it into a drawer before he could take it.

"The board meets Thursday," she said. "You can speak for three minutes. If you remain civil."

Outside, Owen caught up with me.

"Could you email me those pages?"

"Of course."

"The whole board hasn't seen them."

That evening Mara brought her license bills. Four paid invoices, seven hundred twenty dollars each, from 2022 through 2025. They said the fee bought access across association land.

"They never sent a maintenance report?" I asked.

"I asked once. Felicia said I was welcome to live somewhere without a waterfront."

We put the invoices in date order on my workbench. I gave Mara a copy of the page naming her lot.

She read it twice.

"She told me this had expired."

My phone rang before I could answer.

It was Tomas, calling from the ramp.

"Daeho, I found the first survey monument. Bring your old map. This fence isn't where their application says it is."