Barnegat Bay Sneakbox
Description
The Barnegat Bay Sneakbox is a historic American small craft originating in the 1830s on New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay, designed primarily as a duck hunting boat for the region’s marshy waters. Attributed to Captain Hazelton Seaman, it evolved from earlier sneakboxes and was refined by builders like J. Howard Perrine in the late 19th century. Traditionally built from white cedar planks on oak frames in a lapstrake (clinker) style, it’s a low-profile, flat-bottomed vessel with a rounded bow and stern, optimized for stealth, stability, and load-carrying in shallow waters. While primarily a rowing or oar-powered boat for hunting, many sneakboxes were adapted for sailing with a sprit or gaff rig, making them versatile for recreational daysailing, light racing, or utility use in bays, lakes, or estuaries. Production was never centralized; instead, countless individual and small-yard builds were made from the 1850s onward, with modern versions like the Glen-L Sneak Box (1970s) using plywood for DIY construction.
Construction Details
| Designer | J. Howard Perrine |
|---|---|
| Length | 15.000 ft |
| LOA | 15.000 ft |
| LWL | 13.000 ft |
| Beam | 5.750 ft |
| Displacement | 400 lb |
| Max Draft | 5.000 ft |
| Min Draft | 0.500 ft |
| Year Built | 1918 |
The standard boat dimensions
| i | - |
|---|---|
| j | - |
| p | - |
| e | - |
| p2 | - |
| e2 | - |
| i2 | - |
| j2 | - |
| I | J | P | E | P2 | E2 | I2 | J2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Sails
Barnegat Bay Sneakbox - 4-SIDED SAIL
| Luff | 9.33 ft - (2844 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | 13.5 ft - (4115 mm) |
| Leech | 19 ft - (5791 mm) |
| Head | 9.33 ft - (2844 mm) |
| Diagonal | 16 ft - (4877 mm) |
| Tack Angle | 87 ° |
| Area | 137.39 ft² |
| Comments |
Gaff main with 4 leech battens. Area with roach is 157 square feet. |
| Edit in Calculator |
Disclaimer. Boats are not all the same -- even when produced in the same factory of the same model. Sailrite does its best to publish accurate dimensions, but we often find it worthwhile to have our customers measure their boats carefully before we produce kits for them. You should take the same precautions, especially when the data is not from Sailrite. The information on this site is not guaranteed to be accurate. Sailrite offers this content as a service to our community, but takes no responsibility for the reliability of the data provided.
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