POULSBO — A boathouse remained anchored in Liberty Bay on Oct. 30, nearly two weeks after it went rogue in strong winds.

It is the most recent chapter in a story about the boathouse and a port that is happy to be rid of it, while introducing new characters such as state regulators who are now forced to now deal with it.

John Zetty attempted to move his boathouse on Oct. 20, after it had been evicted from the Port of Poulsbo. But heavy winds hit the structure’s walls like a sail. The boathouse broke free from tow lines and blew in the wind through Liberty Bay before a Poulsbo Police boat could anchor the structure.

Zetty said the state’s Department of Natural Resources gave him permission to anchor in the bay as long as he had an anchor light. But the department has now put a clock on it.

Zetty has less than 30 days to move the boathouse or DNR will seize the boathouse and destroy it, in accordance with state law. The department posted a notice on the boathouse and mailed Zetty a copy. Zetty faces the same situation he faced at the port.

“It’s not an approved structure to be out over state [aquatic] land,” Port of Poulsbo Manager Brad Miller said. “It’s not a boat, it can’t move under its own power.”

The department assumed Zetty would move the boathouse or work out an arrangement with the port to move it, according to DNR spokesman Joe Smillie. Neither of those things happened since anchoring.

“I received a phone call from DNR,” Miller said. “DNR asked us if we would be willing to bring the boathouse back into the marina. I told them we would be available to destroy it, but not store it. It took us a very long time to get him to move it. We don’t want it back in here without a light at the end of the tunnel.”

He added, “Nobody wants the boathouse to be out there very long.”

Zetty could ask DNR to move the boathouse sooner than 30 days, though he would still have to repay costs, Smillie said. DNR determined the boathouse is not an imminent threat, so the department is unable to move it sooner, he added.

“They can’t do anything immediately. They have to go through their process,” Miller said. “It’s a 30-day process.”

Port vs. Zetty

The saga of Zetty’s boat and boathouse is a long, complex one, woven with changing owners, lawsuits and a bit of confusion.

According to court records, Zetty was delinquent on his moorage payment three times within an 18-month period: May 2011, April 2012 and January 2013. The third delinquency prompted the port to terminate Zetty’s lease.

Zetty’s problems began when he tried to sell his wooden, 37-foot 1966 Owens powerboat and the boathouse. Each sale appeared to go through and each time Zetty transferred his slip rental with the sale. But each sale failed and ownership returned to Zetty.

Zetty claims he was unaware each time the sale fell through and did not know he was to take on moorage payments again. His rent was late both times, though Zetty paid the rent in full once he found out, he said.

In accordance with port policy, he was notified after his second delinquency that he could remain a port tenant if he made monthly payments by electronic transfer from his bank account, and that any future delinquency would result in immediate termination of his lease. Zetty did not agree to electronic payments.

After a third delinquency, the port notified him in writing that his lease was terminated and that he must remove his boat and boathouse.

After terminating Zetty’s lease, the port refused to accept payments from him because “that could imply reinstatement of his moorage agreement,” Miller said in an earlier interview. According to the port, the port offered Zetty the opportunity to pay his delinquent moorage fees provided he agreed in writing that the payment didn’t create an extension of his lease, but Zetty declined.

Zetty was evicted in December 2012. Until October 2014, however, Zetty’s boat and boathouse remained at the port’s marina, which charged him for taking up a slip. The port attempted to auction Zetty’s boat and boathouse to pay for the errant charges. Zetty filed a complaint for improper impound. He then paid the port’s charges in May 2014.

Around this time, Zetty sold his boat to some friends for $5 and gifted the boathouse. Zetty also said that through behind-the-scenes talks between his lawyer and the port’s, the new owners were to be allowed to take over his old slip, negating the need to move them.

The port maintains a different view, however. When the Port Commission met in August, it voted unanimously not to allow the slip to be transferred and continued the eviction. The port gave the new owners two weeks to move the boat and boathouse out of the slip, but previous accommodations had expired, Zetty said, so they could not move it in that time.

Once again, the port was put in the position of auctioning the boat and boathouse, putting the new owners at risk for paying additional fees. During this time, according to Zetty, the new owners experienced ailing health. Considering the health of his friends, Zetty took on ownership of the property once again.

The boat remained at the port beyond the two-week grace period until Oct. 16, when it was finally moved. On Oct. 17, the Kitsap County Superior Court ruled that the port could again take possession of the boathouse and ordered the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office to assist. The port could then sell or destroy the boathouse. Zetty was given another chance, however, to remove the boathouse, until Oct. 20 at 5 p.m.

Shortly before 11 a.m. on Oct. 20, Poulsbo Police received a call about a boathouse adrift in Liberty Bay.

Before the Oct. 17 decision was made, Port Manager Miller was prepared to take the boathouse and the boat. The port would either sell or destroy them.

“Everybody thinks that we are picking on the guy,” Miller said before the Oct. 17 decision. “That’s far from the truth. The port has been extremely generous with the way it’s handled the issue.”

The port’s request to seize the boathouse stated that it has no value and is “worthless.”

“We’ll take it apart and throw it in the dumpster and that’s that,” he said.

Policy pressure

The port, eventually, legally evicted Zetty’s boat and boathouse. But the case also forced port policies and lack of enforcement to the surface.

The port’s three-member commission has since engaged its policies to bring them up-to-date.

“There are issues regarding reassignment of slips,” Miller said. “We have a policy that only the port can assign a slip from one person to the next.”

“For example, when a boat is sold, the slip doesn’t transfer with the boat,” he said. “Whoever buys that boat has to take it somewhere else. The reason for that is because we have a wait list for slips. It would be unfair to allow the buyer to take the slip; they would essentially be buying the rights to that slip.”

But the port has been inconsistent with enforcing this policy in the past, Miller noted.

“Over the years and decades since the boathouses have been here, that has not been enforced,” He said. “Somewhere along the way it got to a point where the boathouse owners wouldn’t necessarily let us know they were selling the boathouse and a new owner would just walk up one day and ask for a lease.”

The boathouses were once owned by the port, as far back as the ’60s, according to Miller. But the boathouses were subsequently sold to private owners.

Miller said DNR is not allowing marinas to add boathouses, making them more rare. As a result, Poulsbo’s boathouses have higher sales value than in neighboring communities.

Since 2009, boathouses at the Port of Poulsbo Marina have sold for between $21,000 and $60,000, Miller said. Boathouses at the Port Orchard Yacht Club and the Port of Bremerton have gone for no more than $9,100 in recent years, he said.

Commissioners have discussed solutions, such as attaching a transfer fee when selling a boathouse.

“That way, the value of its location is being reaped by the port, not the person selling it,” Port Commissioner Mark DeSalvo said at the Oct. 16 meeting.

The commission remains undecided on the matter. The discussion is expected to continue into future port meetings.

“Hopefully, we will come up with an idea for it to work for both parties and give you guys (owners) some certainty about your boathouses,” Commissioner Jim Rutledge said at the meeting.