More Dredgers for Africa!
News
The last 12 months have seen a further boost to the dredging fleet of the continent of Africa with vintage European units. The main action took place in the dying days of December of of 2022 and 2023.
DSB was involved in the sale of 2 older dredgers from the fleet of JDN to Portuguese-Angolan buyers.
– Self-propelled Cutter Suction Dredger ‘Marco Polo‘, built 1978 at IHC Kinderdijk, Netherlands, 116m LOA, 900mm discharge dia.. A powerful dredger with 3,000kW cutter force able to dredge sticky clay, soft rock in upto 30m water depth. In her day she was one of the biggest self-propelled cutter dredgers ever built.
– Trailing suction hopper dredger ‘Amerigo Vespucci‘, built 1985 at Van Langerbrugge Shipyard, Belgium; 98m LOA, 4,800 tdw, hopper capacity of 3,600m3 with a splithull and bow connection for pump ashore and rainbow.
Both units were made their way from the Caribbean – ‘Amerigo Vespucci‘ on her own keel (crewed delivery organised by DSB). ‘Marco Polo‘ , however, had to be mobilised with great dispatch to Angola so that the buyers could meet contractual obligations with their anxious end client. To this end DSB sourced the semisub vessel GPO Falcon which delivered her with great professionalism and record speed!
Thus ends a period during which Jan De Nul has disposed of some of their older dredging vessels – TSHDs James Ensor (3,600m3), Galilei 2000 (1,900m3), Manzanillo II (4,000m3) and Amerigo Vespucci (3,600m3); CSDs Petrus Plancius (500mm) , Dirk Martens (750mm) and Marco Polo (900mm).
All of them, with the exception of the smallest unit ‘Petrus Plancius’ have found new homes in Africa.
