My old dredge mentor would be amazed by today's GPS systems

Simon Ramirez · 2026-03-08T11:01:51.096945+00:00

Just finished a job where we used real-time GPS to guide the cutter. I remember my mentor teaching me to read paper charts and use a sextant. The accuracy now is AMAZING, and we cut our mistakes by half. It's a small win, but it feels good to see how far we've come.

daniel_perry887mo ago

Imagine what your mentor would think about self-driving dredges.

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noahlane7mo ago

Cutting mistakes in half is good, but is it really that big a deal? We used to get the job done fine with charts and a sharp eye. All this tech just means more stuff that can break when you're miles from shore. Feels like we're just adding layers of complexity to fix problems we already solved the old way.

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blair6267mo ago

He'd probably laugh at the idea until he saw it work. We ran a test with auto-spudding last year, and the big win was consistency, not flash. The system just held the pattern in a stiff cross-current where a human would've fought it. Still had a guy babysitting the junction boxes though. Your mentor would've hated the setup but loved the clean cut.

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