Frankendredger

[dylanwinter]

 

[sailorman]

It looks a highly professional bit-o-kit, i assume the operator has an NVQ

 

[Pete7]

Were was that shot taken? you were in the Solent a minute ago, my guess is the River Douglas.

Pete

 

[KenMcCulloch]

Shouldn't you be heading North by now?

 

[prv]

Looks good to me.

Any idea what the perforated oil drums on the front cross-beam are for?

Pete

 

[sailorman]

Looks good to me.

Any idea what the perforated oil drums on the front cross-beam are for?

Pete

Fenders of course

 

[prv]

Also, I assume the uprights on the aft corners are spuds? Any idea how they go up and down?

Pete

 

[pagoda]

I think that beast opens up a whole new can of worms when you start thinking about their forward nav lights

don't ask!

 

[Searush]

Just a guess mind, but I don't think it will be a dredger. The shovel bucket is too small & there is nowhere to put the mud - apart from which getting permission to dredge anywhere or to dump the waste is just impossible. I think it is intended for laying, lifting & moving moorings.

I'd still like to know what the holey drums are for too.

 

[sarabande]

those drums are each held on by 5 tonne ratchet straps, and might well be filled with concrete to ballast the digger at the blunt end ?

Oil drums are 220 litres so at density of .9 (roughly) that means each one of those weighs approx 200 kg, but th eholes ? Cast in to enable the drum to be lifted by poles inserted ?

Does that assuage your thirst for wild suggestions ?

 

[gregcope]

I love the fact it still has its number plate.

Does it have an MOT and road tax?

 

[sarabande]

looks eminently suitable for work with low bridges, though

 

[prv]

those drums are each held on by 5 tonne ratchet straps, and might well be filled with concrete to ballast the digger at the blunt end ?

I think you've got it. In fact, can we see the top of the concrete in the starboard drum?

Puzzled by your density figure of 0.9 though. Surely concrete sinks?

Pete

 

[prv]

Just a guess mind, but I don't think it will be a dredger. The shovel bucket is too small & there is nowhere to put the mud - apart from which getting permission to dredge anywhere or to dump the waste is just impossible. I think it is intended for laying, lifting & moving moorings.

Surely a mooring-mover would have a hook rather than a bucket? And probably wouldn't need the spuds to hold itself in position. They might like a larger bucket, but the thing was clearly built with what came to hand. And maybe if you're dredging round pontoon piles and the like you want a smaller, more precise bucket?

It actually looks like a redneck copy of the dredger I've seen working on the Basingstoke Canal.

Mud would go in a separate barge - have two and one can be carrying the spoil away while the digger fills the other. That's how the marina dredgers on the Hamble work. And the fact that they do work demonstrates that the Environment Agency's agenda of returning to the Bronze Age can be overturned at least some of the time.

Pete

 

[sarabande]

sorry, elliptical writing and hurried thinking. Diesel at about 0.9, so if the diesel drum holds 220l, the mass is about 200kg inc the casing, but filled with concrete a drum would have a mass of about 2.4 kg/l, so around 525kg each drum. That is in air...

 

[Rigger Mortice]

Any idea what the perforated oil drums on the front cross-beam are for?

They are not oil drums. I'm surprised that you can't see that they are obviously depth charges.

 

[dylanwinter]

Surely a mooring-mover would have a hook rather than a bucket? And probably wouldn't need the spuds to hold itself in position. They might like a larger bucket, but the thing was clearly built with what came to hand. And maybe if you're dredging round pontoon piles and the like you want a smaller, more precise bucket?

It actually looks like a redneck copy of the dredger I've seen working on the Basingstoke Canal.

Mud would go in a separate barge - have two and one can be carrying the spoil away while the digger fills the other. That's how the marina dredgers on the Hamble work. And the fact that they do work demonstrates that the Environment Agency's agenda of returning to the Bronze Age can be overturned at least some of the time.

Pete

Dredging is always a problem it seems to me - partly because no-one fully understands the physics involved in moving stuff away from one place. They had a lot of probs at brightlingsea because the marina pumnped some mud out around some pontoon berths and it all eneded up making some drying moorings across the creek get shallower

the dredging at the deep water sandpit for the windfarm boats at wells was having some most edifying effects on the sand creeks - I was there for two winters and saw the creek where the slug was moored change amazingly.

Wisbech scoured beautfully but there was still some build up along the walls - they used a pump and just let the mud wash off down stream.

I have no idea what is going on with the mud movements at HYC but clearly lots of stuff is moving around and some of the pontoons are pretty neapy.

I understand that the tidal mills at the tops of many of the estuaries let all the water go at once on sundays - that did a pretty good job of scouring channels

it must have been a wonderful thing to see

of course one way around this problm would be if we were all allowed to build jetties out into the deep water - it might clutter up the place with secuity cameras, gates, plastic pilasters etc and even restrict the right to navigate a bit - but who cares as long as the jetty owners pay their taxes.

Oh hang on...

 

[Blueboatman]

Dredging is always a problem it seems to me - partly because no-one fully understands the physics involved in moving stuff away from one place. They had a lot of probs at brightlingsea because the marina pumnped some mud out around some pontoon berths and it all eneded up making some drying moorings across the creek get shallower

the dredging at the deep water sandpit for the windfarm boats at wells was having some most edifying effects on the sand creeks - I was there for two winters and saw the creek where the slug was moored change amazingly.

Wisbech scoured beautfully but there was still some build up along the walls - they used a pump and just let the mud wash off down stream.

I have no idea what is going on with the mud movements at HYC but clearly lots of stuff is moving around and some of the pontoons are pretty neapy.

I understand that the tidal mills at the tops of many of the estuaries let all the water go at once on sundays - that did a pretty good job of scouring channels

it must have been a wonderful thing to see

of course one way around this problm would be if we were all allowed to build jetties out into the deep water - it might clutter up the place with secuity cameras, gates, plastic pilasters etc and even restrict the right to navigate a bit - but who cares as long as the jetty owners pay their taxes.

Oh hang on...

I think it is a latter day trebuchet ' mudslinger' for daubing jetties that Fail The Test..

 

[sarabande]

I have just completed some work with the SW Rivers Trust on bringing back salmon to some Exmoor Rivers. It has been agreed that the big reservoirs will flush the rivers each year for about a week, to remove the silt and algae and weed which has grown up over the last twenty years (this covers the gravel beds where salmon like to spawn). It's not quite like the wholesale removal of dams which seems so popular in the USA at present, but the flushing will help return our rivers to what they used to be before the Water Companies dammed everything to extract water for Bristol

The more obstructions (marinas, etc) there are to the flow, the slower the flow, the more the silt has a chance to sediment, so the more the need for dredging...


Nothing like a good flush, is there ?


I wonder what effect the winter floods will have on e.g. Thames fish life this summer ?

 

[fisherman]

In Hayle you can see on google map the two pools which were used to sluice the bar outside. There were two teams and a flag was hoisted as a signal. Then they decided that one man on a bike could do the job (no). You can see the sluices draining in the pic, the NE one drains directly towards a harbour wall, and there was a training sluice in the corner which was let go first to stream along the wall and buffer the main flow. When it broke they didn't repair it, couldn't see the point...the wall fell down a couple of years later, visible if you zoom in. Those Victorian engineers knew what they were doing.
Hayle was an important port, two large foundries exporting by sea, they built the pump that drained the Zuider Zee, invasion barges where built on the long NW spit, the Wharf Road quay was an ammo dump, and later coal was brought in for the power station until the 70s.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.1876129,-5.4232824,750m/data=!3m1!1e3