PSA: That chat with the marine engineer down at the Port of Savannah last Tuesday changed how I look at my cutterhead wear.

He told me I was running my suction too low and chewing up teeth twice as fast as I should, and after I checked my logs he was dead on, so has anyone else had a shore-side guy save them a ton in maintenance costs?

2 comments

2 Comments

theabarnes29d ago

Shore-side guys are either wizards or they just get to see the same mistakes every day." That's it exactly. A dock foreman once watched me reinflate a leaky dredge sleeve three times before he walked over and showed me I had the wrong clamp size. Saved me about four hours of stabbing in the dark.

alicec8629d ago

Running my suction too low." Yeah, that's what the guy at the parts counter told me after I burned through a set of teeth in three weeks. Turns out I was basically grinding them into dust trying to dig through a clay plug. Shore-side guys are either wizards or they just get to see the same mistakes every day and laugh at us once we finally show up. Last week a welder at the yard told me I was over-pressuring my discharge hose and saving up for a burst. He was right too. So yeah, sometimes the guy who doesn't even get his boots wet knows more than we do.