carfax for a boat ?

I have serious doubts about that site. I have a nice little thank you plaque from Collins Marine with my hull ID number here in my office so I tossed it in for a search. It did come back that it was a Chaparral, but there was a link at the bottom to “register boat”. I followed it and they want me to enter in all the information you would normally get on carfax, like date of purchase etc.

So chances are if the owner of the boat hasn’t been to this site to enter their information that search isn’t going to return much info. It looks to me like it’s user entered data version of carfax. From the sounds of what they appear to be selling I’m guessing they have a database of stolen HID#'s they search against but not much more.

Bottom line, you’re probably way better off getting someone who knows boats and the problem areas to watch for to look it over for you than trusting boatfax.com.