Inovermyhead wrote:I contacted Georgia DNR to inquire about the boats registration history as I found an old 1997 registration number on a faded sticker on the hull.The DNR was able to provide the HIN assigned to the boat and tell me the year (1973).
The information a state boat registrar like the Georgia DNR can provide is whatever the person who registered the boat told them. As a general rule a state boat registrar just accepts whatever information the person paying for the registration decal provides them. It might be accurate, or it might not. But it is not really authoritative. It is common to find people have registered boats with the wrong model year, the wrong model, and even the wrong manufacturer.
Inovermyhead wrote:I did contact the manufacturer...
I think you mean Boston Whaler.
Inovermyhead wrote:...and spoke with a very nice lady who took my boat information. She stated she enjoyed looking up old boat information and began a search of their records.
Thanks for the information that you could reach a customer service representative on the telephone and that Boston Whaler could still look up records for their old boats.
Inovermyhead wrote:She mentioned the stencil number was much more important on these older boats and the HIN was hard to find and did not provided data on their end.
Regarding the federal HIN on boats, prior to the Safe Boating Act of 1971, there was no federal regulation that required a boat manufactured in the United States to have a unique identification number attached to every hull according to a uniform scheme set out by the government. The use of federal HIN identification began in 1972. So "older" boats, that is boat made prior to 1972 never had a federal HIN because they did not exist then.
The HIN can be decoded to provide some limited data about a Boston Whaler boat from the production sequence alpha-numeric number. As is explained in the FAQ, the production sequence identifier was used by Boston Whaler in particular sequences associated with particular hull lengths and in some cases particular models. All of this information is in the FAQ, including Boston Whaler documents that describe the production sequence numbering scheme. You really should read the FAQ to learn about hull identification, if you have an interest in that topic.
If your boat was a 1973 it would have had a HIN identification. The FAQ explains this is more detail. The FAQ also explains that the method of attachment of the federal HIN identification used by Boston Whaler was a metal tag that was attached to the hull by rivets, but that often on older boats those metal tags are no longer in place. If there is no longer a metal tag with the federal HIN on your hull, the tag probably became unattached and was lost.
Inovermyhead wrote:I received an email several hours later....the boat was a 1973 Currituck which was delivered to D D Marine in West Palm Beach FL on 2/22/1973
That is exactly the information that Boston Whaler recorded in their old ledgers. The information is not really "searchable", as it is hand-written and organized by stencil number and by hull length.
Inovermyhead wrote:Probably some of the best customer service I have ever experienced.
Boston Whaler has been performing like that for over 60-years. To hear they continue that type of support is good news.