I inherited an Ensign that has been in the family for many years and is in great shape. I'm working on getting the registration updated and registering the boat with my sailing club and am trying to figure out the Hull number and Year of construction. I have the HIN number but when I google decoding the HIN number what I find doesn't seem to correspond to what I have...Any help would be appreciated.

Most Ensigns were built before HINs were mandated. Ensigns built before HINs have only a build number. For example, my boat is 513 which corresponds with the order in which she was built. To register a boat or change registration or in some cases renew a registrations, your state registration authority will assign a HIN. The assigned HIN has nothing to do with the manufacturer, order of build, month of build, and so on. It is just an arbitrary number that has the correct number of letters.

In South Carolina, if you were able to register the boat with the original build number, the boat can keep that number as its registration number. If the boat were to move out of state, however, the new state would issue a new HIN to be affixed to the hull. I hope this helps. By the way, the Ensign yearbook gives the years of manufacturer for each hull number. My 513 was built in 1965, I think -- I would need to look it up.

Thanks for all the help. From the sail # and the year book looks like we have Hull #2013 which was manufactured in 2005 so Hull number after "ENCO" and last 2 digits for the year from the plate in the picture I provided.

Cheers,

John

Zeke,

Cool connection to the boat, ENCO2013E505 is the number from the plate, the boat was named Tango when it came into our family.

Cheers,

John