Quote:
Originally Posted by Airwaves
However, the first 2 letters that indicate the state are not always the same two letters used by the postal service to designate a state.
MA is Massachusetts when you mail or ship something, but on a boat the Massachusetts designation is MS (Mississippi if you are going to ship something) On the water Mississippi is MI
Just for chuckles I followed the MS vs MA for Massachusetts bow numbers to see how many state’s it screwed up.
Massachusetts: MS should be MA
Mississippi: MI should be MS
Michigan: MC should be MI
The others I found are
California, CF instead of CA
Washington, WN instead of WA
NB can be either Nebraska or New Brunswick
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I believe this is because the boat registration abbreviations pre-date the postal service official state abbreviations.
Since when in New Brunswick a state? LOL. Canadian numbers are in the format 12 E 45678, IIRC. It's been a long time since I've seen any Canadian boat though (they were prevalent on the Great Lakes).