Dredging.....part 1-2-3-4

[Wayne in BC]

n/t

 

[AuzeeSheila]

Thanks Ron J for posting those pics. My husband, also a Ron, is a Dredgemaster by trade and started out as a 'river rat' on barges dredging for gravel. The units he worked on originally, were hopper barges with a crane on board the barge itself. He became quite adept at driving the crane due to boredom while waiting to be loaded. It took some skill to to swing the bucket over the side and haul it in because the barge would tilt from side to side with the movement and added weight to the crane of the loaded bucket. Sometimes they would get a new, experienced (on land) crane driver who would give up on his first day because he couldn't get used to the sway of the barge as the crane worked. Ron always worked at least a 12 hour shift with the tides--going upstream (3hrs) empty with the incoming tide, loading for 3hrs, then 3hrs down with the outgoing tide and then 3hrs discharge. The first time I went with him there was an awful fog where you couldn't see 100 ft ahead and I don't know how he knew where to steer that barge . . . and that was without GPS and all the technology they use today. He was trained by Dutch dredging companys and there are no greater authorities on earth in this field. These days he is the DM of a suction dredge which is an actual ship with two big suction pipes which are lowered over the side to deepen shipping channels and such. Ten years ago he went to Vietnam and the contract was to dredge at Hyphong where there was known to be a lot of unexploded ordinance and it didn't please me to hear it described as a " one flash and you're ash'' job. He is working now in Australian waters, for our government, until he retires.
Auzeesheila.