Another naive newbie question: this boat we bought has two numbers on it, the North Carolina registration number, which I understand, and the number 3535 on the sails.



Where did the 3535 come from - I assume it has something to do with racing? Is it probably registered somewhere, or do people put whatever number they want on the sale, or what?



Jonathan

If it is the original sail that came with the boat, the number on the sail would correspond to the serial number for the boat. In your case, it would mean that yours was the 3,535th Prindle 16 popped out by the factory. Your boat's serial number should be etched into the fiberglass on the stern of each hull. The serial number contains initials that represent the name of the manufacturer, the date and year of manufacture, and, I think, the model of boat (P16), as well as the production number, which would be 3535.



Now, this is not true of all types of boats. The A-Class catamarans, for example, are made by a variety of manufacturers. If you join the class association, you are assigned a sail number by the association. If it is an international class, you will also see the country designation on the sail in front of the number to differentiate when you have the same number but from different country class associations. The number has no relationship to the number of boats built.



And then, of course, there are boats that are home-built or that have been modified or are not class-legal and may have just picked a number out of the air and put it on their sail.



In the case of single-manufacturer boats (which yours is), usually the number relates to number of boats built, but even then you cannot consider that number to be completely accurate. I once worked for a beach-cat manufacturing company that is now defunct, and they started their boat/sail numbering system at 100 just to make it look at the outset as though 100 boats had already been produced.