Deduce year of Boston Whaler

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jimh
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Deduce year of Boston Whaler

Postby jimh » Fri Nov 12, 2021 3:44 pm

A bashful reader writes an email to me asking for help in deducing the year of his Boston Whaler boat's manufacture. The salient information he provides:

Boat is a MONTAUK
Stencil number is 3B662x
Federal hull identification number is seen on a metal plate on exterior of transom reading 885x 81 A.

(Here I have obscured the actual stencil number and HIN with an "x" as the last digit to not identify a specific boat.)

Bashful reader comments he "cannot match these up with any info on the internet."

My first comment: read the FAQ at Q1: How Old is my Boston Whaler boat? to get all the information needed to "match up" this number with well-known information about HIN numbers on a Boston Whaler boat. I will demonstrate the method:

On the basis that the boat is a 16/17 foot hull (due to the unconfirmed identification as a "Montauk") then the stencil number can be used to deduce the age by consulting the REFERENCE section and the article about the 16/17-hull.

From the table of serial numbers or stencil numbers, we look for the appropriate year-range of 3B662x. This range is not found in the table because the table ends with the 1972 year. The conclusion: the boat is newer than 1972. There are also many obvious hull design changes that would further confirm the boat's year of production as being post-1972, as 1972 was a year of significant changes, as mentioned in the REFERENCE article on the 16/17-foot hulls.

Next we parse the partial federal hull identification number or HIN, 885x 81 A. For this task we use the FAQ answer for Q2: Where is the Hull Identification Number?

Reading that section we immediately are drawn to the subsection under the heading Metal Tag because the bashful reader has mentioned there is a metal tag.

There are two formats used on the metal tag, the STRAIGHT YEAR FORMAT and the MODEL YEAR FORMAT. The only choice that fits the partial number is the MODEL YEAR FORMAT, based on the HIN ending with an alphabetic character, not a numeric character. We then decode the HIN using the MODEL YEAR FORMAT. In order to develop the original HIN, we have to read the section of FAQ Q2 under the heading Missing Letters or Numbers on Metal Tag.

If the HIN does not begin with the manufacturer identity code (MIC) for Boston Whaler, we assume that this is a case of a metal tag with painted-on characters, and now some are missing or faded out. We know the format is

MIC-NNNNN-M-XX-Z where
MIC = Manufacturer's ID Code = BWC for Boston Whaler
NNNNN = five character production code or serial number = [a missing character]885x
M = "M" for Model year format, but usually preprinted so now missing
XX = two-digit year of production; 81
Z = month of produced using code; A = August

Now we can deduce the actual HIN was most likely

BWC [unknown]885x M 81 A

From this we can very accurately say the boat was manufactured in August 1981. This boat was probably sold as a 1982 model, as usually model change over would occur in July or earlier. All that remains is to deduce the missing character in the five-character production number.

To get help with deducing the missing character, we move to the section of the FAQ under the heading HIN Sequence. There we are directed to a another document referred to as a HIN Sequence Number drawing.

A careful inspection of the HIN Sequence drawing shows an entry for the "17' Models". A note mentions:

NOTE: OLD 19' HIN PLATES B8700 THRU B8899 USED ON 17' BOATS AS AN EMERGENCY MEASURE.

Because the partial HIN sequence number on the boat is question is 885x, we note that number is precisely in the sequence mentioned above. On that basis, a reasonable inference is that the original HIN was most likely

BWCB885xM81A.

Bashful readers are strongly encouraged to register with the forum and participate in the forum. I communicated with the bashful reader by email to point him to this reply to his question. I never received any further communication from bashful reader to acknowledge my work in decoding the HIN for his boat, so I have no idea if he ever found this article.