Krakesandt

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THECLA BODEWES SHIPYARDS.

The frst dredger, TSHD Anchorage was successfully delivered to the owners in 2020. Both TSHDs are designed to extract sand and gravel aggregates from the seabed. Each vessel has a single suction pipe and a hopper capacity of 3,000m³. These innovative vessels have a length of 105.90m, width of 15.85m and a draught of 6.94m. The newbuilds are equipped with a smart diesel-electric system, developed in close collaboration between the shipbuilder and D&A Electric, that efciently regulates the energy supply for sailing, dredging, and unloading the ship. As a result, energy and fuel consumption is optimised and the ship’s emissions are greatly reduced.

The postponed christening of the second dredger, now named Krakesandt, took place in Kampen, the Netherlands, on Thursday 24 March. The ship was christened by Ms. Sabien Binkhorst and its name was kept a secret until the actual christening. The ship is named after a 14th century sandbank of the coast of the Dutch town of Cadzand. There is also the legend of the kraken, a sea monster of enormous size that looked like an octopus. According to sailor’s lore, when part of this monster was above the water level, it resembled a sandbar and many a ship mistakenly docked there. The ship and crew would then disappear into the depths never to be seen again. As current knowledge has it, this sea creature actually existed until at least the 10th century. After Easter, Krakesandt went from the yard in Kampen to Thecla Bodewes Shipyards in Harlingen, from where the sea and dredging trials started.

In addition to smart and stable power management, the use of the E-prop® electric propulsion increases the overall propeller efciency during dredging, sailing, and manoeuvring, optimizing energy and fuel consumption and greatly reducing the ship’s emissions. The hull shape is optimised for sailing with both loaded and unloaded draught by means >>

Yard nr Name Flag Port of registry Delivery of vessel Location of delivery Loa / Lpp Breadth moulded Breadth extreme Depth Draught Speed 348 Krakesandt Dutch Terneuzen 04-05-2022 Harlingen 105,90m / 100.55m 15,85m 16,39m 8,85m 6.94m 10 knots

of Computional Fluid Dynamics calculations. The trailing suction hopper dredger is – just like the successful sister ship Anchorage – ready for the future by applying this sustainable and state-ofthe-art propulsion technology.

The dredger was designed and built to extract sand from the North Sea, which is used as a raw material in the concrete industry and road and house construction. The ship is equipped with two large open holds, the hoppers, which allows loading of diferent mixtures. In the North Sea, about 25km from the coast, these hoppers are flled up with a sand pump and a drag head that drags over the bottom like a kind of vacuum cleaner. When the hopper is full, the sand from the large dredger is transferred to inland vessels. A special wet discharge installation has been designed and built for this purpose. In order to get the sand out of the hoppers, the sand is liquefed from the bottom up through drainage pipes integrated into the foor of the hold. Two special electrically driven double-walled sand pumps suck up the (quick)sand from below in the hold and pump it via a hydraulically manipulable loading arm into the hold of the inland vessel moored next to the seagoing vessel. The (quick)sand sucked up is so concentrated that hardly any water needs to be pumped overboard from the cargo hold of the inland vessel. When the hold is almost empty, there is also a manipulable water cannon ready to spray the last remaining remnants of sand from the corners so that that too can be loaded into the barge. A special feature is that the loading arm can follow the movement of the inland vessel. Because during loading the inland vessel gets deeper and deeper and the hopper dredger less and less deep, the skipper does not have to do anything, and the cargo can be transferred quickly and efciently so that the hopper dredger can start the next journey without having been in port.

The modern, intelligent dredger Krakesandt was built entirely in the Netherlands in collaboration with Dutch suppliers. Like sister ship Anchorage, the ship was designed by Barkmeijer Shipyards, part of the Thecla Bodewes Shipyards group, and built at Thecla Bodewes Shipyards in Kampen. Client De Hoop Terneuzen is a major supplier of building materials in Holland and Belgium. The dredger is being commissioned in the frst quarter of this year. The ship has strengthened the feet of De Hoop Terneuzen in the spring of 2022. Barkmeijer Shipyards and Thecla Bodewes Shipyards have over 300 years of shipbuilding experience between them. This knowledge and experience is successfully used for the development and construction of a strong range of products: dredgers, short-sea vessels, and robust low-water solutions such as the successful series of pusher tugs for European and South American inland waterways. The success of this project has been made possible in particular by the close cooperation and trust between De Hoop Terneuzen, Thecla Bodewes Shipyards, and all partners involved.