By Bruce Karnick

Monday, November second and Friday, November sixth, there was some heavy equipment in use at the Hastings public boat launch. Vic’s Crane Service was helping unload and load a newly rebuilt river dredging machine. Loading and unloading occupied the boat launch for most of the day. The dredging machine was used to clear approximately 60 feet of the sand bar near Hubs Landing. The machine was recently rebuilt with a marine motor to run the dredging screw and pump. The owners chose this spot because they wanted to stress the setup, make it work as hard as possible, and sand is one of the heaviest materials to dredge, so it was a perfect opportunity to run the new motor to its limit.

The process sounds pretty simple, use the screw to cut into the sandbar, this turns it into a slew that is sucked in to a basket behind the screw, that pushes it through the pump into a long hose, and pumps it on to shore. The crew setup roughly 400 feet of hose between the small barge and shore. Without the addition of floats on the hose, they would need significantly more length and power to reach the shore, so they use floats to keep the hose on the surface of the water.

How did the test of the recent upgrade go? Very well, the new engine worked better than expected for the crew. They were able to clear about 20 feet of the sandbar per day over the three days they were actively dredging. The first and the fifth day were used to move the equipment on or off the water and get everything setup as needed.

Unfortunately for some boaters that wanted to take advantage of the nice weather last week, the ramp being occupied for about eight hours was a pretty big inconvenience. One onlooker commented that he saw a few boat owners leave very angry that they could not use the public boat launch.

Overall, the test of the equipment was a success, a local business was able to benefit from it and it was pretty cool to see the equipment work, especially at the loading process, which is a win-win in The Journal’s eyes!

This dredging barge was recently upgraded with a new marine engine for the dregding drill and pump. The sand bar by Hubs Landing was the perfect spot to run the new engine to the max to test it out. Photo by Bruce Karnick

The Hastings boat launch was occupied most of the day with a crew removing a dredging machine from the Mississippi river. Check out how far they had to raise the front of the crane to get it level. Behind the nose is a 10 foot ladder. Photo by Bruce Karnick