filipo brunelleschi – Sophisticated dredgers for Asia

A somewhat neglected ship type is the dredger, which is a pity since they are very high-tech with state-of-the-art equipment. A good example is Filippo Brunelleschi which, together with a sister ship named Francis Beaufort, was built at Izar?s Sestao yard in Northern Spain. These vessels are 11,300 m3 trailing suction hopper dredgers, designed and built to perform a number of operations including dredging and delivering the spoil either ashore ? into the hopper or directly overboard in the case of light dredged spoil. They also have the facility to dump the spoil on the seabed through one row of hinged doors on the bottom of the ship or by means of two shallow water dumping doors. A bow connection arrangement is fitted, suitable for coupling to a flexible floating pipeline, as well as a bow jetting installation.

Both vessels will be operating in Southeast Asia on reclamation projects. Although not among the largest of their type, these newbuildings are more manageable and able to dredge down to a depth of 71 metres by means of a 3,400kW underwater pump. The Dutch company of Imtech NV was contracted to supply the Jan de Nul newbuildings with its

high-tech patented

control system called UniMACS, with integrated navigation, propulsion, alarm, monitoring, control and communications.

The Filippo Brunelleschi and Francis Beaufort were featured in the June 2003 issue of The Motor Ship.