TOPIC: HIN NUMBER LOCATION???

Hi everybody! We are brand new to this site. Just bought our first boat. 1959 Whitehouse Sailfish (best guess). We just got it home today. It needs lots of work, but we just emptied the fifteen years of junk which was piled inside and were wondering where we should look to find the HIN number. Does anyone know where it would be located? Apparently one of the previous owners had steel plates installed to reinforce the transom. This will need to be addressed while renovating it, is that where the HIN number was located?

Welcome aboard!

I cannot give specific answers to your inquiry about this boat maker, Whitehouse. However, I can give you some general information.

There was NO requirement for boat manufacturer's to have any type of idenfification on their boats until November 1972. Therefore boats built prior to that date did not have to have a VIN or serial number or hull number or any type of idenification on them.

Some builders did put a HIN on their boats and if they did, it was that particular company's own unique system. Therefore it varied form builder to builder. Some builders did not put any ID on their boats. Some did.

And if the builder did put an ID on the boat, location could vary from one firm to the next. Inside the transom was a typical location. but I have seen them under the front deck and on the gunwale.

Andreas

Thank you very much for the response. We are looking forward to getting started on this project--hopefully when the weather gets a little better. We really just wanted to positively id the make/model of the boat so we were hoping to find some kind of id number on it. From all the photos/ads we have found, it most closely resembles the sailfish model of the time. We are trying to learn how this site works, and this was our first "test post." It seems like it will be a very useful resource as we work on the boat. Thank you again!

As I am sure you now finding out, Whitehouse made many, many models that perhaps differed only slightly in the style of the front deck or tailfins. I can't recall whether a manufacturer's ID plate has ever been found on a Whitehouse.

As you poke around inside the boat or separate and remove the deck to address structural concerns like replacing stringers, floor, or transom, be sure to examine all inside surfaces for a metal or paper tag or any glassed over tag. Sometimes assembly numbers or hull numbers can be found this way.

If your concern is registering the boat in the future, you can add a metal ID plate or sticker numbers. Some states will even assign you a hull number. If your boat came with a registration or registration numbers on the boat, the registration info may include the hull number. If you have registration numbers but no registration, try to request information from the state. They may give you the make/model and year if they still have the records.

We had good weather today, so we tore it apart. Found no identification of any kind, yet. We will inspect it as we go, like you said. Thank you. Now that we took measurements, based on this website's listing of measurements, the transom size also matches only to the sailfish model, so we are pretty sure our guess was correct. We had made the guess based on the front markings and tail fins, which you also pointed out distinguished one model from another. So we are still going with our assumption that this is a 1959 Whitehouse Sailfish. Thank you again.