wooden boat: Boat festival widens horizon in 29th year
DOVER TWP. EVENT BECOMES A CLASSIC
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 07/7/06
BY JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP — The Wooden Boat Festival, renamed the Classic Boat Festival, is not just for wooden vessels anymore.
The annual festival, sponsored by the Toms River Seaport Society, will feature classic fiberglass boats for the first time, according to festival chairman Chet Ehrman.
The 29th annual festival will feature antique, classic and contemporary
wooden boats Saturday, and classic fiberglass boats — both sail and power — Sunday.
Judging and awards for the wooden boats will be at 3 p.m. Saturday, with people's choice and chairman's choice awards for the fiberglass vessels to be presented at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The festival also will feature local marine artists, boat rides on the Toms River, music, games and food. Many of the boats will be available for boarding by the public.
The Maritime Museum, at the corner of Water Street and Hooper Avenue, will be open both festival days. The museum is a short walk from the festival area.
The featured boat this year is the Barnegat Bay sneak box, which is celebrating its 170th anniversary. This shallow-draft, round-bottomed boat was used for duck hunting and was first built by Hazleton Scaman of West Creek in 1836, according to information distributed by the Seaport Society.
Other boat builders in the area began designing their own versions of the sneak box. In the last half of the 19th century, Samuel Perrine and, later, his son, J. Howard of Barnegat, began building "improved" sneak box models which established the boat's reputation as a stable craft that glided easily over the shallow surface of the bay.
Originally, the sneak box boats were 12 feet long and 4 feet wide. They were shaped like the bowl of a spoon on the bottom and were able to glide easily through the water, allowing hunters to literally sneak up on flocks of resting geese or ducks.
Water fowl was a major staple in the diet of the bay people, and the sneak box boat was light and could be easily hauled by a solitary hunter.
Modern sneak box boats, which still are sailed on the Barnegat Bay, are 16 feet long and 5 feet wide. Some are now made of fiberglass instead of the native cedar wood used by 19th-century boat builders to construct the craft.
About 30 restored sneak box boats race each August at Mantoloking Yacht Club in the "Duckboat World Championships." Many sneak box boats will be on display at the boat festival.
