Boat restrictions

Karen,

Absolutely yes, you can rinse the boat off if indeed it goes into the garage after a cleaning. The HOA m ust be reasonable on this covenant. My Florida developement had the Board add into a rule, that the boat may be temporarily parked for 4 hours in the driveway during a cleaning. If it was going to be there for a full day, then a call to the P.M was requested so that they knew what was going on and any calls referring to the parked boat would have a simple explaination. It was added that no more that twice a week could any boat be parked for an extended time period.

Lawrence,

We had a similar discussion with our HOA attorney. He interpreted the covenant to say that the garage was NOT considered on the lot but to be within the structure or otherwise know as within the improvement. He said the key word was "ON" which did not refer to "IN" (as in garage)

So this is one reason that there are lawyers. To each interpret what on or in means. In a court case that we were in, the Developer was summoned by the court to state what his intentions were when writting a particular covenant. It was different than what our Board was enforcing so this will be interesting to see what the intention of the boat covenant is.

Karen,

Why is the Board allowing boats to be parked in the garages? Did they pass a rule or just by a verbal allowances are boats in the garages? From my above post, we had the same situation, with our attorney saying that despite the covenant, boats could be parked inside the structure. I agree with Lawrence that perhaps the wording of the covenant is needing some tweeking.

The intention of such a covenant is to prevent boats from being parked where they are visable to neighbors and street traffic. This is a typical restriction in Florida where boats outnumber the alligators so perhaps with that in mind, the attorneys do interpret boat covenants differently.

The developer allowed boats in the garage and even built three car garages for people with boats. These families that store their boat in the garage, park their boat on the driveway for a short time to wash off the salt water or load and unload for a trip. One of these residents has been doing this for 12 years. No one in the neighborhood seems to care about the boat on the driveway for a short period of time because they know it will be put into the garage. But then there are others who purposely bring in their boat and park it on the driveway for a week or more. When the board acts against these violators, they claim "selective enforcement". The covenant as it reads now does not allow boats (or any other recreational vehicle). The board is trying to propose an amendment to the covenant that would allow a short period of parking for loading, unloading and washing recreational vehicles- no more than 12 hours with permission and no more than twice a month. There are residents that are outraged at this because they bought into a community with restrictions and feel that a change in the covenant would be a breach of contract.

Karen -

Based on your two most recent posts and the quote from your covenants in your original post, I would offer the following thoughts:

1). Based on the 3 definitions, it doesn't appear that your covenants ban boats entirely, just from being parked, stored, kept on the lot surrounding your home.
2). You should review your governing documents to ensure that the Board has the right to make and enforce rules that are supplementary (but not contradictory) to the Declaration and By-laws.
3). If the Board has this right, they should probably institute and enforce a time limit/frequency rule regarding boats in the driveway. As long as it has some semblance of sanity, the rule would likely even withstand a court challenge under the "what would a reasonable person conclude" principle.
4). As to amending the covenants, that's certainly possible, but may not even be necessary in this case. A legal opinion would probably help decide (and the opinion may be cheaper and certainly less troublesome than actually undertaking a covenant change).
5). The folks talking about covenant changes be a "breach of contract" are full of hot air. As long as the amendments are done according to the governing documents themselves, there is no "breach" of anything (except possibly the false expectation that nothing could ever be changed).

Thanks everyone for your opinions. We are going to consult an attorney. We probably have to go through the amendment process and have the attorney write sometihng that is not ambiguous and is enforceable -- if that is possible.