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Lights glow aboard the 355-foot-long dredge Texas as the full-moon rises over coastal Delray Beach on March 20.  Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

NOTE: The drege was towed away for minor repairs April 3, and is expected to be back on site early next week, according to Matt Jack, project manager for Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company.

By Cheryl Blackerby
    
The big red dredge named Texas sits offshore from Delray Beach, its four 20-cylinder diesel engines — the same engines used in locomotives — pumping sand 24 hours a day onto the beach.
    Five anchors, each weighing 15,000 pounds, hold the enormous workhorse in place.
    A crew of 18 to 20 men, including a father and son, lives aboard, working 12-hour shifts, with two weeks on and one week off.  One is retired U.S. Navy and a few were Merchant Marines. All are well-traveled veterans in a highly specialized global operation.
    Some of them have stayed on the peripatetic dredge for years as it roamed the world — two years in Bahrain, two years off and on in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, months in Cancun, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. It works the East Coast from New York to Brownsville, Texas.
    After the job is over in Delray Beach, the dredge will move to New Jersey for work on beaches damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Home port is New York City. It will make the trip, towed by one towboat, in 10 days.
    Built in 1980, the Texas is the most powerful dredge in the United States and in high demand for getting jobs done fast and efficiently. The dredge’s owner, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, based in Oak Brook, Ill., was founded in 1890 and is the largest dredge company in the U.S.
    Great Lakes was the first contractor to go to work in Iraq in 2003, performing harbor maintenance work at the Port of Umm Qasr to enable the entry of humanitarian cargo. The company also did emergency dredging in response to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

This boom at the end of the dredge controls the cutter head and pipe that sucks sand up from the ocean floor. Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

    The Texas is 305 feet long, 355 feet including the 670-ton “ladder,” a steel arm that holds the cutter. The dredge costs $100,000 a day to run, including fuel but not the crew’s salaries.
    The dredge is quiet and still as Capt. Randy Stewart walks the narrow metal corridors. He’s been on the Texas for a year, but has lived on dredges for 30 years. His home is in Tampa, so the dredge’s stay in Delray Beach is a welcome change that allows him to go home frequently.
    Stewart looks at 11 computer screens in the dredge operation room over the shoulder of dredge operator Jackie Stelley, who has worked on the dredge since it was built.
    This is the heart of the dredge. There’s no bridge, since the dredge is not self-propelled.
    “Cutting 55 feet today,” observes Stewart, “and moving 20 to 30 feet an hour.”

Dredge operator Jackie Stelley has worked on the Texas since it was built in 1980.         

    One screen shows the position of the cutter in the ocean floor. The suction diameter is 34 inches, and once vacuumed up parts of a Volkswagen Beetle off Rockaway Beach in Queens, N.Y., as well as telephone poles and coolers. But no fish or marine life because the noise and vibration tend to scare them away.
    The sand shoots into a 2,000-foot float hose, then down into a 2,000-foot submerged steel pipe, then to a pump that sprays it onshore. The dredge’s crew sifts the beach for large rocks that may be thrown onto the shore with sand.
    In the ship’s survey office, a team of a half-dozen engineers and surveyors processes information from the weather to the ocean to a constant stream of survey graphics.
    Life on the dredge has many of the comforts of home. A big-screen TV in the lounge gets all the satellite channels, including sports packages.

Since the crew works around the clock, James Kennedy prepares five meals each day

    In the kitchen, James Kennedy, a Louisianan, is cooking up rice and jambalaya, fried shrimp and fish, which is greatly appreciated by the 10 men in the crew from Louisiana. Kennedy is eager to discuss the nuances of jambalaya and its many ingredients. Dessert is Kennedy’s chocolate cake.
    Kennedy cooks five meals a day for men who work up big appetites far from home.       

 Industrial-size wrenches dwarf a face shield and paint roller.

Constant maintenance is required because of the saltwater exposure.