I’d seen McFarland before . . . once at the dock stern out and another time anchored in the middle of the night on Delaware Bay, lit up like a parking lot.  I’m so thrilled that I’ll run a series of her . . . .starting with the USACE dredge passing Pac Alnath.

A first sighting for me . . . Charles Burton.

Back to McFarland . . . one of four ocean-going hopper dredges operated by the USACE.  Can you name the other three?

. . . Nanticoke and Peter F. Gellatly, both pushing Vane barges.

Huge turntable on McFarland.

Chief . . . I believe the 1979 built vesel.

From this USACE publication, I like this statistic:  a full load of dredged materials McFarland carries equals the capacity of 310 dump trucks.

Just before sunrise, she steamed by . . . and passed B. Franklin Reinauer in the city of Benjamin Franklin himself.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

The other three dredges are Wheeler, Essayons, and Yaquina.   For comparison info about the four, click here.  For Bert Visser’s directory with fotos of all the large dredgers in the world, click here.

For a post on Delaware River tugs from 2010, click here.  What I’d like to see one of these days is the loading of livestock down in Wilmington.    Currently, Falconia is at the dock;  I saw her from the highway on Friday.

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