New Vessels – June 2, 2008
The keel laying ceremony for the trailing suction hopper dredger Vox Dubai took place on Friday May 30th at the Kinderdijk shipyard of IHC Dredgers, a subsidiary of the IHC Merwede group.
Vox Dubai will be the largest trailer ever built in The Netherlands, and is being built in sections at different sites, and then assembled at Kinderdijk.
The first sections were built at VSH in Heusden, which is also a part of the IHC Merwede group. These sections were moved in large blocks to Kinderdijk on a pontoon, from which they were moved up the slipway on arrival. The three sections (midship to intermediate deck) taken together are 100m long and 31m wide, with a depth of 9.6m (that is, larger than a 2,500m³ hopper dredger).
Detailed engineering started in late 2007 to allow for the efficient construction of the ship, which will be launched in the spring of 2009.
In 1990, the largest trailing suction hopper dredger had a hopper capacity of 12,000 m³; the size of such vessels has now passed through a number of stages, resulting in ‘jumbo’ trailing suction hopper dredgers with capacities of 17,000-24,000m³. Twelve of these ships are now in operation around the globe.
Vox Dubai has a length of 203m, beam of 31m, depth of 17.50m, dredging draft of 14.50m, dredging depth of 70m, and hopper capacity of circa 32,000m³. The total installed power is 31,165kW, and crew will be 46 people.