More Cutterheads

Here’s GLDD’s cutter suction dredge Florida as seen from above the cutter head and

photo taken October 2010 in the KVK

from alongside.  I took the first three photos in this post.

photo taken October 2010

Here’s Weeks cutter suction dredge C. R. McCaskill,  with Sea Wolf serving as a tender.

photo taken near Rockaway Inlet September 2013

USACE E. A. Woodruff was built in 1873 and worked the Ohio. Technically, I think Woodruff was a snag boat.

USACE Florida was the most technologically advanced dredge built when it was launched in 1904.  Unfortunately, she sank with loss of life 14 years later and is currently a dive site.

USACE Barnard was built in 1904 as well in Camden and sold to Mexico in 1942.

Here’s another view of Barnard with

a tender alongside.  It looks a lot like the buoy boats on the Erie Canal.

Dredge Welatka was built in 1925.

Dredge Congaree was built in 1914 in Charleston SC.

Here’s USACE Potter originally built in 1932 and still in use.

For many more vintage USACE photos, click here.

Many thanks to Barrel for this trip through USACE technological history.

Sixth Boro Details 5

Here was 4.

And this . . .

is the cutterhead ladder of C. R. McCaskill.

Looking generally northward from Fort Wadsworth, from nearer to farther . .  fishing boat, tanker, ATB,  ferry, and Jersey City.

Catch the name of the approaching tanker running rinse through the anchor hawse . . . ?

Chem Bulldog.  The other above written in Greek says Corossol.

Frisia Rotterdam Gibraltar.  Know the etymology of “gibraltar”?  Check it here.

Caption?

After delivering another 50,000+ tons of South American salt to NYC, Kenan has already sailed southward to Puerto Bolivar to load ….

coal.   Click here to see Kenan‘s itinerary over the past nine months.

Last shot . . . Alegria I.

All photos yesterday by Will Van Dorp.

Random Tugs 123

It’s Margot, last included on this blog here.  Guess the location?

And a former fleet mate of Frances, it’s  Catherine Turecamo . ..  with Gage Paul Thornton way in the background.

Here’s a closer-up of Gage Paul with Robbins Light in the background.

New York Central No. 13 . . . changing at a glacial pace and probably regressing, not progressing.   My last photo of this boat might be here.

Here’s Robert leaving the sixth boro this morning with a tow that

includes dredge McCaskill, which I previously featured here high and dry  and here from the inside.

East Coast meets west coast this morning alongside Corossol.

The newer Dean headed eastbound on the KVK and

and finally . .  another configuration of Marjorie B. McAllister.

All photos taken this week by Will Van Dorp.

Oh . . . Margot‘s location in the first photo is Tottenville NY, with Outerbridge Crossing in the background.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 12

Here’s where the “leverman” sits for a twelve-hour shift as the C. R. McCaskill slews port to starboard 400′ once each three and a half minutes.   Another way of saying that is  the dredge moves using a five-point mooring system: two swing anchors, two breast anchors and one stern anchor to move forward or back.  A different configuration uses a spudded idler barge;  in this case, the “swing” is longer and takes more more time.   Food gets delivered so that the leverman aka dredge operator can monitor all these screens and respond so that dredging can proceed 24/7 as long as equipment and conditions permit.  More on food later.

Slewing . . . drawing on cables attached to positioned anchors and pivoting on a stern point . . . requires that the 30” diamater hose be able to flex.  Hence, the easy curved slack before the piping to the beach.

The crewboat in the distance alternates between hydrographic survey work and other tasks.  More on that in a moment.  More crewboats in a future post.

Attachment at the stern is a ball and socket joint . . . like your hip.

Here’s the starboard GE engine, part of the power supply to the dredge.

Here is another view of the two huge hull-mounted pumps that do the work.

Another task of the crewboat is illustrated here:  recreational boaters sometimes allow their curiosity to override any sense of danger caused by a busy, slewing dredge.

The helicopter happened to be here on assignment to photograph the work from the air.

About the food, here’s  mission control presided over by Edwina Arthur, a member of the 30-50 person crew.

Food rules and pecking order are clearly posted.

Captain Randy Guidry, my host for this tour,  proudly displays the builder’s plate, Corn Island Shipyard in Indiana, where the hull was constructed.

As I stated in the previous post, McCaskill’s part in the dredging/beach replenishment has now ended and vessels and crew have moved south for the next job.

Many thanks to Captain Guidry, Jan Andrusky, and all the other fine folks at Weeks Marine for this tour.

All fotos, text, and (any inadvertent errors) by Will Van Dorp.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 11

Here and here are previous posts on a Rockaway Beach replenishment dredging operation that has now ended.   Sea Wolf is still local, but the vessel on the horizon (“atop” the red buoy) has now moved to southern NJ.  Remember, for most fotos, doubleclick enlarges.

Weeks’ Trevor was assisting in this project.

Also assisting was George W.

But here’s the powerhouse, the dredge.  Let’s take a tour.

In spite of about 16,000 total horsepower, C. R. McCaskill is not self-propelled.  To see what towed the dredge to the south, see the foto at the end of this post.    All that power moves the cutterhead on the submerged arm (called a “ladder”) that extends to the sand at the bottom of the Channel here.  At the top end of the ladder are two huge pumps (you could stand inside the pump housing) that suck the sand and whatever else off the bottom and send it as a slurry to a point on the beach some miles away.  Click here for a pdf that shows the beautiful (ok . . . roll your eyes) virgin red cutterhead with green teeth.    Each tooth weighs around 35 pounds!

Here inside the dredge are some interesting astounding facts about the machine.

See the sand colored building on the horizon off the stern of McCaskill?  That’s the area around 105th St. Rockaway Beach where the sand is headed through piping powered by this vessel.  The first few fotos in this post were taken at that beach.  There’ll be another Rockaway post soon.

Candace towed C. R. McCaskill south.  I missed her when she was in town, but John Skelson caught her here.  Click on the foto to see John’s complete shot.  Many thanks to John for use of that shot from his Flickr page.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except for the one shared by John Skelson.  For more info on each of the Weeks tugs, click here.  More McCaskill tomorrow.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 9

Here’s a followup on the Rockaway sand pumping, and there’s gold in those sands, over $36 million worth.   Notice the dredging/pumping vessel upper right.

This was the fountain this morning.

Once the slurry exits the mouth, water flows back into the ocean and sand is pushed up the beach.

This repurposed container is project headquarters.

The top foto comes thanks to Barbara Barnard;  all others by Will Van Dorp.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 8

I’m back, with lots of gallivanting to catch up, but first . .  a whole lotta fotos from this morning in the sixth boro.  Any ideas what’s going on here?  What is that gray blur in the center of the foto and why are the gulls so frenzied?  Be forewarned . . . this post has so many twists/turns . . . it’s divided into parts, even though I took all these fotos in the span of less than an hour.

Part 1

Answer:  It’s how over three million cubic yards of sand is being added to Rockaway Beach . .  at least for a while.  Here’s what the NY Daily News says about it.  Here’s an article and video from Dredging Today.

And here . . . off in the Rockaway Inlet are the machines mining and pumping the sand, seen closer up in this recent  tugster post.

Part 2.  Notice  the piping coming from the stern of McCaskill.

I could not resist wondering about these birds whose name rhymes with “lovers.”

Part 3.  Follow this sweep of fotos as I turn to the left.

An Atlantic City billboard on Far Rockaway?  Is a mixed up sense of geography part of Sandy’s legacy?  I keep turning left.

A Potemkin village and that’s an A  Train station to the right?

See the silvery cars of the A train?  It’s a Boardwalk Empire set in the wasteland of eastern Rockaway Beach . . . . I was hoping to buy some of that food at those prices!

Of course, I had to look behind.

I half expected to find some Aral Sea boats back here too.

Part 4.  Once back on the boardwalk, I saw this fishing boat about a quarter mile from shore.  I’m guessing it’s unrelated to the sand piping and pumping, but   . . . who knows.

All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.

Specialized 19

So what travels through this piping?

C. R. McCaskill was launched just over a year ago with a bottle of champagne across one of the 35-pound teeth of the cutterhead.  Click here for a foto and story.

For more technical info on McCaskill‘s capabilities, read this article by my friend Brian Gauvin and published in the August 2013 issue of  Professional Mariner magazine.   In the article, he talks about McCaskill‘s ability to send dredge spoils six miles through a pipe to restore and create marshes to serve as hurrican barriers in Louisiana.

So although I haven’t seen it happen yet, I’m concluding that this vessel can pump whatever comes from the East Rockaway Inlet to the location three or so miles to the west, where you saw Trevor, George W, and Sea Wolf operating in yesterday’s post.

Three years ago I took fotos on another cutterhead suction dredge– one that’s a half century old–operating in the KVK back in 2010.  Click here for some of those fotos, including one that shows the size of the pump used to move dredge spoils from point of  “collection” to point of “use.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who most recently saw a Weeks tug at work in a dredging project in a North Carolina Inlet.   My question is . . . does anyone have fotos to share of C. R. McCaskill‘s transit from its inaugural work in Louisiana to its current location in the sixth boro?

And Sabine . . . looks like she was launched back in 1980 from here.

Thisjust in  . . .  the Daily News story on this post-Sandy project, as seen from a politicophile POV.