Page 34: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2024)

VANETA

MARIE

Courtesy DSC Dredge

Muddy Water Dredging’s new cutter suction dredge (CSD) and it paints what the bottom looks like.

Vaneta Marie “represents the future of dredging technology”, “When an operator shows up on a Corps job, before they according to Bill Wetta, senior vice president, and chief tech- start digging, they can make a pass to the left and a pass to the nology of? cer of DSC Dredge, the Reserve, La. based com- right, and basically, they can see everything on the bottom, pany that built the dredge. real time, that's in front of them and behind them and they

Christened during a ceremony in New Orleans earlier this year, know if the job that they're going on even resembles what the

Vaneta Marie is a fully customized Marlin Class dredge that mea- plan was. Then as they start digging, it's real-time updating so sures 371 ft. long, making it one of the longest in its category. they can see the changes they're making in the channel. They

Boasting the capability to dredge a 400-ft.-wide cut with can also see what's caving in behind them. So, if the dredge an 80-degree swing arc, it sets a new standard for operational advanced a hundred feet and the whole bank caved in, they ef? ciency, enhancing productivity by 5.9%. Furthermore, its would be able to see that real-time, back up and ? x that, rather customizable design features a detachable carriage barge, en- than having to wait for a survey crew to come on board.” abling seamless adaptation to various working environments. Sometimes advanced technologies can complicate operations, “Vaneta Marie was speci? cally built for a certain set of but Wetta stressed that’s not the case with Vaneta Marie. “There projects in the Gulf Coast area, primarily the Calcasieu River, are a lot of computers on the dredge, and for traditional dredge although it will actually work from Galveston all the way to operators, that can be scary,” he said. “But when you sit in the

Pensacola,” Wetta said. The dredge will perform “mostly nav- chair of the dredge, there's basically two screens and eight but- igational maintenance-type work, where material is not that tons. One screen looks like a video game, and that's DSC Vision: deep, but it tends to be more in the corners of the channel, a rendering of what the bottom looks like in a 3D-colored map. where movement becomes really important.” The other side [are the] gauges that the operator looks at to con- “[Muddy Water Dredging] wanted to be able to dig depths trol the dredge. The operator doesn't have to be aware of every- to the new Panamax ships. This dredge can dig pretty deep, thing around him [as that’s] handled with the automation system. so it could actually dig container ports that went as deep as If there is a problem, he and the chief engineer will be noti? ed.”

Panamax vessels.” Another standout feature of the Vaneta Marie is its dual diesel-

With Vaneta Marie, the DSC team was able to match “un- electric power package, delivering 9,621-horsepower of total in- paralleled performance with forward-thinking designs”, Wet- stalled horsepower. “The [Wabtec] engines are the only in this ta said. Notably, the dredge features DSC's survey-grade DSC class that can be [EPA] Tier 4 without a bunch of post-treatment

VISION package and Dredge Rx remote monitoring system or diesel exhaust ? uid,” Wetta said. “Looking at the exhaust, it's for enhanced precision and performance. pretty clear you don't get any black smoke with the engines. It “DSC Vision is a multi-beam sonar that's attached to the sips fuel compared to some of the higher speed engines.” dredge, and sonars typically don't really work unless there's The diesel-electric setup also unlocks other capabilities. movement. . . We use the motion of the dredge to create the “Because it's diesel-electric, can take power from the grid; so motion for the sonar. So we're actually looking at a line per- this machine could run strictly off of an umbilical cord. It's pendicular to the center of the dredge, maybe 100 feet forward also designed, because we're in a hurricane area, where we of where the cutter head is, and all the way back behind where can export the power off these engines in a disaster event, and the ladder pivots at the trunnion. We look at that line, and as we could power a city or a plant. So, it's basically an eight- the dredge pivots from left to right, that line becomes a plane megawatt power plant that becomes a dredge.” 34 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • December 2024

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