Cutterhead clogged with old rope on the Wabash job, lost half a shift

Tuesday morning on the Wabash dredge near Terre Haute, we hit a buried tangle of braided dock line that wrapped the cutterhead so tight I couldn't reverse it out. Took me and the deckhand 3 hours with bolt cutters and a torch to pick it free, and the hydraulic pressure gauge was spiking the whole time, which scared me more than the delay. I should've checked the sonar returns harder before dropping the ladder, that spot had a sunken piling nearby that probably snagged the rope off a boat years back. Anyone else run into random rope or cable that looked like nothing on the scan but chewed up your day? What's your go-to trick for clearing a wrap without killing the bearing seals?

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the_adam1d ago

The thing nobody talks about with sonar is that rope doesn't show up worth a damn unless it's got growth or junk on it, so blaming yourself for missing it on the scan is kinda unfair. That sunken piling is the real tell though, because stuff snags on those and just sits there for years collecting more line, cable, old crab pots, whatever drifts by. Here's an angle for you: after a wrap like that, pull the seal housing and check it even if nothing looks wrong, because pressure spikes during a stall can push the seals past their limit without blowing them right away. The damage shows up two weeks later as milky hydraulic oil and then you're doing a full rebuild instead of a gasket job. As for clearing wraps, if reversing won't break it, kill the pump and work the cutter by hand with the ladder up, way less risk than fighting it under pressure with a torch.

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