If your vessel is used for commercial purposes and it exceeds the net weight of 5 tons, it needs to be registered with the United States Coast Guard (USCG). If you use your boat recreationally and it also has 5 net tons or more you can choose to get USCG documented as well. Why would you do this? For aesthetic reasons, to access preferred mortgages, or to be able to travel internationally. Additionally, there is a registry with all of the boats documented by this administration. If you are about to get involved in a buy-sell transaction, perhaps it would be a good idea to learn how to conduct a USCG vessel search. Read on if you want to find out!
USCG Vessel Search Made Simple
The process is pretty straightforward. Once you are on the home page of our site you need to go to the USCG vessel search page, which can be found at the bottom left side of our site, after the rest of the documentation. The button literally says “DOCUMENTED VESSEL SEARCH AT MARITIME DOCUMENTATION CENTER”. Once you are there, you can either input your vessel’s identification number or HIN number and press search.
If you typed the number correctly, you will get a list of all the documents that are linked to that vessel from when it was first registered. This will include the registration, expiration date, and some other pertinent information. Keep in mind, however, that the information on your search is not “official”, it is just for you to double-check the information the seller of a boat is telling you, for example. The official document that gives you access to the vessel’s history while it was documented with the USCG is called “Abstract of the title” and you can get it just by feeling the form which is also accessible from the form’s list at the left of our site.
Some Boating Documentation you can Get at our Site
Other than the abstract of the title, there are other types of USCG documents you can get at the Maritime Documentation Center. For instance, if you want a boat to come up on a USCG vessel search, that boat must have gotten the initial form of documentation at some point. After that, the owner was awarded a certificate of documentation which lasted for either 1 or 5 years according to the main purpose of the boat. After that, the owner must have had to renew the document. If he didn’t do it on time, it is possible that he had to reinstate it instead. Additionally, if the situation of the owner changed during those years, perhaps at some point it was needed to get a certified copy of the document, or even a replacement if it was lost or mutilated. Another chance is that you had to move out, in which case you might have needed to change the address or hail the port of the vessel.
The Maritime Documentation Center Helps you Out!
As you can see and as we said, there are many different USCG documents that can be obtained at our site, and all of them should come up on a USCG vessel search. The Maritime Documentation Center offers you the possibility of accessing all of them from the comfort of your own home, and to have someone from our experienced staff overlooking the documentation you submitted so that no mistakes are made. Contact us today and clear all of your doubts!