Lost a cutterhead to a hidden stump near Port Arthur yesterday

I was working a small channel dredge job near Port Arthur yesterday and hit a buried stump I didn't see on the sonar. Bent the teeth on the cutterhead pretty bad, lost about 2 hours swapping it out on the barge. Anyone else deal with surprise debris that the survey missed, or do y'all run extra passes before starting?

2 comments

2 Comments

viola_ward17d ago

Yeah that's a rough one, buried stumps are sneaky bastards. Always run a couple extra passes with the side scan before you start digging, especially in old river channels where that stuff hides.

cole99417d ago

Depends on the river though. Some of those old channels got filled in with sand so deep it'd take a month to hit anything worth worrying about. I've seen guys freak out over a shadow on the screen that turned out to be a half-buried tire.