Great Ship of 2024: CSD Vaneta Marie

Muddy Water Dredging’s new cutter suction dredge (CSD) Vaneta Marie “represents the future of dredging technology”, according to Bill Wetta, senior vice president, and chief technology officer of DSC Dredge, the Reserve, La. based company that built the dredge, and one of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News' 'Great Ships of 2024.'

Christened during a ceremony in New Orleans earlier this year, Vaneta Marie is a fully customized Marlin Class dredge that measures 371 ft. long, making it one of the longest in its category.

Boasting the capability to dredge a 400-ft.-wide cut with an 80-degree swing arc, it sets a new standard for operational efficiency, enhancing productivity by 5.9%. Furthermore, its customizable design features a detachable carriage barge, enabling seamless adaptation to various working environments.  

“Vaneta Marie was specifically built for a certain set of projects in the Gulf Coast area, primarily the Calcasieu River, although it will actually work from Galveston all the way to Pensacola,” Wetta said. The dredge will perform “mostly navigational maintenance-type work, where material is not that deep, but it tends to be more in the corners of the channel, where movement becomes really important.”

“[Muddy Water Dredging] wanted to be able to dig depths to the new Panamax ships. This dredge can dig pretty deep, so it could actually dig container ports that went as deep as Panamax vessels.”

With Vaneta Marie, the DSC team was able to match “unparalleled performance with forward-thinking designs”, Wetta said. Notably, the dredge features DSC's survey-grade DSC VISION package and Dredge Rx remote monitoring system for enhanced precision and performance.

“DSC Vision is a multi-beam sonar that's attached to the dredge, and sonars typically don't really work unless there's movement. . . We use the motion of the dredge to create the motion for the sonar. So we're actually looking at a line perpendicular to the center of the dredge, maybe 100 feet forward of where the cutter head is, and all the way back behind where the ladder pivots at the trunnion. We look at that line, and as the dredge pivots from left to right, that line becomes a plane and it paints what the bottom looks like.

“When an operator shows up on a Corps job, before they start digging, they can make a pass to the left and a pass to the right, and basically, they can see everything on the bottom, real time, that's in front of them and behind them and they know if the job that they're going on even resembles what the plan was. Then as they start digging, it's real-time updating so they can see the changes they're making in the channel. They can also see what's caving in behind them. So, if the dredge advanced a hundred feet and the whole bank caved in, they would be able to see that real-time, back up and fix that, rather than having to wait for a survey crew to come on board.”

Sometimes advanced technologies can complicate operations, but Wetta stressed that’s not the case with Vaneta Marie. “There are a lot of computers on the dredge, and for traditional dredge operators, that can be scary,” he said. “But when you sit in the chair of the dredge, there's basically two screens and eight buttons. One screen looks like a video game, and that's DSC Vision: a rendering of what the bottom looks like in a 3D-colored map. The other side [are the] gauges that the operator looks at to control the dredge. The operator doesn't have to be aware of everything around him [as that’s] handled with the automation system. If there is a problem, he and the chief engineer will be notified.”

Another standout feature of the Vaneta Marie is its dual diesel-electric power package, delivering 9,621-horsepower of total installed horsepower. “The [Wabtec] engines are the only in this class that can be [EPA] Tier 4 without a bunch of post-treatment or diesel exhaust fluid,” Wetta said. “Looking at the exhaust, it's pretty clear you don't get any black smoke with the engines. It sips fuel compared to some of the higher speed engines.”

The diesel-electric setup also unlocks other capabilities. “Because it's diesel-electric, can take power from the grid; so this machine could run strictly off of an umbilical cord. It's also designed, because we're in a hurricane area, where we can export the power off these engines in a disaster event, and we could power a city or a plant. So, it's basically an eight-megawatt power plant that becomes a dredge.”