Last winter I registered my CLC Chesepeake with the State of Illinois. Today I received a letter from DNR with the Hull Indentification Number (HIN) that they arbitrarily assigned along with the requirement that....... Is this something new? I've never heard of it before. ********* You might have someone who is confused at their office. Years ago, when Pennsylvania Fish & Boating decided to require registration of canoes and kayaks, which was/is a very unpopular move, it resulted in a great deal of bureaucratic complications, rejection of applications, etc. etc. Not a few paddlers in this area got letters of rejection saying that although they had supplied the boat's serial number as required, they had neglected to include the Hull Identification Number and their registration would be denied until they supplied it.... They were very insistent upon this, but nobody here had a clue as to what they meant. If we would have been familiar with power boating practices, as FG&B was, then we would have known that many boat hulls were made by other manufacturers, which were then shipped to other companies who finished the boats themselves under their own brand names (sort of like the original ABS Warsaw Hull was sold to Blue Hole, Old Town, etc., who built their own boats around them...). The Hull Identification number was a Federal requirement having more to do with safety and compatibility with various fuels. Anyway they automatically assumed that there should be a HID on all boats, including canoes and kayaks. Took a little while to disabuse them of that notion... So far as I know, a Hull ID number per se is still not required for human powered craft --because it's not powered, but I think a serial number of some kind might be... There's a USCG site somewhere defining the serial number (includes manufacturer and year...) and I seem to recollect that there's a procedure for determining a serial number for a hand-made boat... IOW, you might want to query them about this... Joe P. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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