Frequently asked questions

A free quiz at vesselguide.net for people shopping for a used boat. Tell it how you’ll use her, where she’ll live and what you can take on, and it matches you against the 263 models in our catalog built 1975–2010 — showing what the catalog confirms, what to check closely, and the problems owners report. No account needed. Take the quiz.

Yes. “Save my search” copies your matches into a free Custom Boat Manual account so you can come back to them. When you buy, add her from My boats and start her owner’s manual.

Use the free hull ID check. Type the 12-character HIN from the starboard side of the transom and it shows when the boat was built and her model year (for all three US formats since 1972), and who the maker’s code belongs to. It also flags common misreadings, like the letter O where a zero belongs. It doesn’t tell you about accidents, theft or title problems — for those, it links to paid history-report services and to the Coast Guard’s documented-vessel search.

No. Any boat for sale may have been modified or repowered since she was built. Always get a marine survey — and read the buyer’s guide for what to inspect, system by system.

A web app for owners of used boats — the first 7 days are free. It writes an owner’s manual for your particular boat, keeps her maintenance schedule and service history, prints checklists for her systems, helps you troubleshoot problems using your own manuals, draws her DC wiring, and keeps a logbook — typed, or read from your handwritten pages.

Your first 7 days are free, with no card to enter. Everything works — add your boats, upload all your manuals, photos and logbook pages, and have her owner’s manual written — and the troubleshooter answers 3 questions so you can try it.

After that it’s $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and it covers everyone you share a boat with. It renews automatically until you cancel, and you can cancel any time from your account page. If you don’t subscribe, your boats and records are kept but closed until you do — you can still download or delete them. Vessel Guide, Learn, the model pages and the hull ID check are free for everyone. See the plans.

On your account page, choose “Cancel, switch plan or change card”. That opens Stripe’s page for your subscription, where you can cancel, switch between monthly and yearly, update your card or download invoices. A cancelled subscription runs to the end of the period you’ve paid for. After that your boats and records are kept, closed until you subscribe again.

Any boat can be added. Our reference catalog covers 263 trawlers, cruisers, sportfishers and sailboats built from 1975 to 2010. Boats from those years often change hands without their manuals, and they were built before integrated electronics made every boat different. Pick your model and the questionnaire starts with what that model is known for.

If your boat isn’t in the catalog, add her anyway: the questionnaire, maintenance schedule, checklists, owner’s manual, logbook and troubleshooter all work without a catalog match. Browse the catalog by make.

Yes — it works in any phone or tablet browser. To open it like an app, use your browser’s “Add to Home Screen”.

The manual is written a chapter at a time — engines, fuel, cooling and exhaust, running gear and steering, DC and AC electrical, water, heads and bilge, electronics, anchoring, safety and emergencies, getting underway, maintenance, winterizing, troubleshooting, and rig and sails for sailboats. Only the chapters that apply to your boat appear.

For each chapter it reads your questionnaire answers, the manuals and surveys you’ve uploaded and the reference data for your model. Where a fact is missing or two sources disagree, it asks you up to eight short questions first. Then it writes the chapter: procedures as numbered steps, cautions, key figures with where each came from, and a list of things to confirm aboard.

Treat it as a well-organised starting point, not the final word. It isn’t the builder’s or an equipment maker’s manual, and no marine professional has checked it. Any figure it couldn’t confirm for your boat is labelled “typical — confirm for your boat”, and it doesn’t invent part numbers, capacities, torque values or wiring details. Confirm specifications against the equipment maker’s documentation and your own boat, follow USCG regulations and ABYC standards, and use a qualified marine technician for work you aren’t trained to do.

When your answers, documents or open items change, the chapters written from them are marked out of date so you know to rewrite them — one click each.

Yes. Print the whole manual or single chapters, plus a startup checklist, shutdown card, generator run card, winterization procedure (for your storage: in the water, on the hard or trailered), spring recommissioning list, start-up log, service book and electrical diagram.

Yes. Photograph the pages (up to 10 photos, or a PDF, per upload, 20 MB each) and they’re read into draft log entries. You check and correct each one before it’s saved, and the original photos stay with the boat.

Yes. Export a recorded track from your chartplotter or navigation app as a GPX file (up to 15 MB) and upload it to the logbook. Each trip in it becomes a draft entry with its date, times, distance, time moving, top speed and a drawing of the track; a new trip starts wherever two hours pass with no positions. You check the trips, add where you went and the hour meters, then save. Tracks stay private to your log — they aren’t part of a service history you share.

Each entry can take every engine’s and the generator’s hour meter at the start and end of the trip, and the end readings go into her hour history, so services due by the hour stay up to date. The logbook checks each trip’s readings against the others and against her readings from service entries and fuel fills. For the season it shows the hours on the meter beside the hours on logged trips, and it flags readings that can’t all be right, such as a meter that goes backwards or more engine hours than the trip took. A reading that doesn’t fit isn’t added to her hour history until it’s corrected, so a typo can’t make every service look due.

Owner’s manuals, engine and equipment manuals, surveys and your own notes — PDF or text files up to 40 MB each, up to 40 per account. Scanned (image-only) PDFs are read page by page, up to 600 scanned pages per owner every 30 days — with no limit for subscribers.

On your boat’s page, choose “Share the service history”. Pick what it shows — costs, who did the work, open items and your home port are your choice — and you get a link to send. Whoever opens it sees a read-only page they can print or save as a PDF, with no account needed. Each link expires when you choose, you can see how many times it’s been opened, and you can withdraw it at any time. You can also download a PDF copy yourself.

Yes. When you fill in your boat’s engine or generator, choose “Read it from a photo of the nameplate”. The make and model are read exactly as printed on the plate and filled in for you, with the serial number and rating shown so you can check them, and anything it couldn’t read for certain is flagged.

Yes. Each boat has a spares list: what you carry, the part number and any cross-references, how many are aboard, how many you want to keep, and where each is stowed. Anything below its minimum is flagged on your boat’s page. When you log maintenance you can mark a spare as used, which takes one off the list and adds its part number to the entry. If you’ve uploaded your engine or generator manuals, it can find the part numbers printed in them — each one with the manual and page, and nothing added until you say so. The list prints as an inventory sheet.

Yes. On your boat’s page, choose “Share with crew” and invite them by email. Each person signs in with their own account, and you choose what they can do: a co-owner can do everything except delete the boat and choose who has access; crew can log trips, hour readings, maintenance done and open items and use the troubleshooter, but can’t change her profile, delete anything or see what she costs; a viewer sees her records and checklists and changes nothing. You can change someone’s role or take the boat away from them at any time, and they can leave it. Your subscription covers your boat, so they don’t need one of their own to work on her.

Yes. The expense log on each boat’s page records fuel, moorage, yard bills, insurance and the rest, with totals by year and category. Costs you enter in the service history count too, and anything recorded in both is counted once. Fuel fills with the gallons and an hour-meter reading give your fuel burn per engine hour. Photograph a receipt and it’s read into a draft you check before saving; the receipt stays with the expense. You can download everything as a spreadsheet (CSV).

Describe the problem in plain words, and add photos if they help — a part you can’t identify, a gauge, a leak, wiring or an engine nameplate (up to three per question). It searches the manuals you’ve uploaded, uses what it knows about your boat’s engines and systems, and tells you which pages it relied on. Boating terms in its answers link to the glossary. For anything that could put the boat or crew at risk, get a qualified technician.

In the free week the troubleshooter answers 3 questions, and the assistant (asking chapter questions, writing chapters, reading logbook pages, receipts and nameplates, drafting the wiring) can run 40 times a day. A subscription has no limits — no daily limits, and no limit on scanned manual pages — for the subscriber and for everyone working on their boats.

Yes — most model pages only have an illustration, so owners’ photos help everyone. On your boat’s page, choose “Share a photo”, confirm it’s yours to share, and pick how you’re credited (“a model owner”, or your username). We blur boat names, registration and sail numbers and faces, remove the photo’s location data, and review it before it appears. You can withdraw it any time.

The Learn section is free and open to everyone: a glossary of 469 boating terms, how to tie the essential knots, handling your boat in different sea conditions, marine electronics, and a used-boat buyer’s guide.

You sign in with your username or email and a 6-digit code we email you. Codes expire after 10 minutes and work once, so there’s no password to forget or leak.

No. We don’t sell or share your personal information — not with brokers, dealers, advertisers or anyone else. We only send marketing email if you tick the box to get it, and every one has an unsubscribe link. See the privacy policy.

Only you, and the people you invite to her — each with the role you choose. Nobody else can: your boats and records are shown only to signed-in people with a place on them. The public model pages show catalog information about each model, never your boat. The people who run Custom Boat Manual can see account data to keep the service working, and if you opt in to marketing email we use your boat’s basic details (such as her engines and home port) to choose what to send you.

Yes. “Export / back up” on your boat downloads one file with her profile, hour readings, maintenance log, open items, electrical diagram, logbook (with each trip’s hour readings and track), the text of her manuals and her owner’s-manual chapters. The new owner imports it into their own account with “Import a boat”; the chapters arrive marked out of date, ready to rewrite with the new owner’s answers.

On your account page, choose Delete account. We email you a code and ask you to type your username, then your account and everything in it are deleted, and any subscription ends straight away. You can download all your data from the same page first.

Email hello@vesselguide.net.