Caught a cutterhead wrap at 3am on the Mississippi near Baton Rouge

I was running a 12-inch cutter suction dredge last Tuesday night and the suction gauge started acting funny. Dropped from 22 inches to 15 in about 30 seconds, felt like the pump was starving. Shut down and pulled the ladder - found a 30-foot length of steel cable wrapped tight around the cutterhead. Took me and my deckhand about 4 hours with torches and a come-along to get it all off. Anyone else ever deal with old mooring cable or anchor chain getting tangled up in the head?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai_brown2328d ago

Man that "melts into the head" part you said @wendy_bell83 is way too accurate. I swear that steel cable just worms its way into every gap and then tightens up like it's got a personal grudge against you. Spent almost as long as you did just getting the pieces out with a torch and come-along, my back was killing me the next day. What's funny is I've done this job long enough to know better than to get cocky about what's down there, but every time I think I've seen it all something like this happens and reminds me I'm just a guy with a torch and a bad attitude at 3 in the morning.

wendy_bell8328d ago

Oh man, that sounds like a nightmare (especially at 3am, yikes). Did the cable snap while you were cutting or was it just buried in the bottom? I had something similar happen last summer on the Ohio River near Paducah - got a big chunk of old anchor chain wrapped around the cutterhead. Took me and my helper almost 6 hours with a grinder and a lot of cursing to get it free. That steel cable is the worst though, it just melts into the head and gets tighter the more you try to pull it. Feel your pain for sure.