Annual r eport 2002 Annual r eport 2002 - Boskalis

Carel Stetter, head of the building team of
the Waterway
The Waterway: Ship of the Year 2002
The Waterway is a trailing suction hopper dredger
that was specially designed for work in shallow
waters. On 25 May 2002, it was chosen as ‘Ship of
the Year’ by the Royal Netherlands Association of
Maritime Technicians (KNVTS).
The Waterway is broad and flat. During the design
phase, it was known affectionately as “the littl’un”.
The specifications for the ship were drafted entirely
by Boskalis. Its unusual shape (length = 97 meters,
width = 23 meters) means that the ship has a shallow
dredging draft of 6.58 m. Despite this, her hopper is
quite large at 4,900 m 3 . “That means the ship is
eminently suitable for work in shallow waters like
beach and foreshore replenishment”, says Carel
Stetter, the head of the building team. “The Waterway
has a number of special technical features.
For example, two of the four discharge doors are
positioned so high that they are not under the ship
during discharge work.”
This feature proved useful during the first job done
by the Waterway in the spring of 2001. During repair
work on the coast of South Holland (foreshore
replenishment), there was sometimes only twenty
centimeters of water under the ship during the
discharge of, in total, 750,000 m 3 of sand!
The Waterway has been added to the fleet of
Westminster Dredging Company in the United
Kingdom. The ship is used in Europe and elsewhere,
for example for foreshore and beach replenishment,
and for dredging and maintenance work in
shallow waters.
20 Annual Report 2002