Two numbers get you the Coast Guard's own record on a documented boat, free. Here's what we ran, what came back, and what a blank result doesn't tell you.
Almost everything below runs on her hull identification number (HIN) and, on a documented boat, her Coast Guard official number. Ask the broker for both. If you only have her name, read it off the transom in the listing photos, because the first search takes a name too.
A HIN is 12 characters. It's typically on the upper right of the transom, molded in on a fiberglass boat, and since August 1984 builders have also had to put a hidden copy somewhere inside (MarineTitle's HIN page has the details). Your surveyor can find that one.
Go to the Coast Guard's PSIX vessel search. Enter her name, official number or HIN, then click her name in the results. On the boat we ran, it gave us her official number and HIN, the year built, her length, breadth and tonnage, her service type, and whether her Certificate of Documentation is valid and when it expires.
Read it against the listing. The year should match, and so should the HIN once you've seen the one on the boat. The service type tells you whether she's on record as recreational. A certificate that has lapsed is worth asking about.
⚠️ Don't panic over the length. The Coast Guard's figure isn't measuring what the listing is. One boat advertised at 39'9" shows 36.7 feet. Our length guide covers why a boat can carry more than one number.
MarineTitle's documentation lookup takes the same numbers or her name. It added her hailing port, her builder, where the hull was built and how she's powered. The hailing port is a quick check against where the listing says she's kept.
When the two disagree, go with the Coast Guard. On our test boat, MarineTitle's certificate dates were one renewal behind PSIX, and MarineTitle says itself that its data isn't always current.
The same site has a free accident search, which it describes as incidents reported to state agencies. Ours came back "No records found." That means nothing is on file there, and it can't tell you nothing happened. Its pages also carry ads for background checks on the seller. We'd skip those.
The Coast Guard's recall search is free and goes by builder, model and year. It goes back a long way: the builder we tried had recalls opened in 1998. If one applies, ask whether the work was done and whether there's paper to show it.
None of the free searches above showed a mortgage or a lien. For that, there's the abstract of title, which you request from the Coast Guard's National Vessel Documentation Center. The request form (CG-7043) and the fee schedule are on their forms page.
It identifies the boat, then lists what's been recorded against her in date order: bills of sale, mortgages and claims of lien, plus the documents that clear them. A maritime attorney writing in The Log spells out its limits. It only covers the time she was documented, and recording a lien is optional, so a valid lien may be missing and a listed one may not be valid. He also says to compare its numbers with the ones marked on the boat, because a mismatch could be a typo or something worse.
A boatyard can also be owed money that shows up on none of this. Our project boat guide has the question to ask. We're not lawyers, and this is a question to ask, not advice. Ask who is running the title search at closing and what it covers.
Boat History Report searches by HIN, state registration or official number and says it checks for accidents, hurricane damage, total losses and title history. Ask the broker first, since the company sells reports to dealers and they may already have one. We haven't bought one, so we can't tell you how complete it is.
A search that finds nothing doesn't clear her. A boat registered with a state instead of documented may not be in the Coast Guard's list at all. A renamed boat may not come up under an old name, so search the HIN too. Damage nobody reported isn't in anyone's database.
These are worth a question to the broker, and none of them is a verdict:
None of this replaces a survey. It's how you decide whether she's worth paying for one.
Older lists point to BoatDB, which is a shipping and trade data site now, and the boat we tested didn't come up. They also point to NOAA's copy of the Coast Guard's vessel list and to Vessel History Report, and neither would open for us. We can't vouch for those three, so they aren't in the steps above.
We ran the PSIX, MarineTitle and recall searches ourselves on November 5, 2026, using one documented boat for sale, and checked what came back against her listing. The abstract's limits come from a maritime attorney's column in The Log. We haven't ordered an abstract or bought a paid report, and we aren't lawyers.
If we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it: support@caniloop.net. A correction from someone who has actually run it is worth more than anything we can write.