Posted on August 27, 2017
By Jennifer Franciotti, WBALTV11
A new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey vessel will soon be crisscrossing Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
It will work faster and more efficiently than ever before to accomplish its mission.
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“She’s definitely using a lot more new technology, so going from an older no power windows to having a boat that’s got power everything,” lead surveyor Andrew Payson said.
The job of surveying the Baltimore harbor is about to get a whole lot easier for the Army Corps of Engineers. The survey vessel Catlett is replacing the Linthicum, which has been in service for more than 40 years.
“New design boat where it’s a foil-assisted catamaran where the old Linthicum was essentially an old crew boat,” Payson said.
Like the Linthicum, the corps will use the Catlett for hydrographic surviving of the harbor for dredging operations, checking conditions which is a daily operation. Not only is the Catlett bigger than her predecessor, she’s also fast, almost twice as fast as the Linthicum.
“It lets us get on survey site faster and perform more survey operations on any given day. Our Baltimore harbor channels are 150 miles of channel so the more time we can spend on station, the more operations we can get done,” Payson said.
The Catlett is named after the late Harold Catlett Jr., who served with the corps for more than 30 years.
“He was a great guy to work for. I never saw the man raise his voice. He was always nice. If you did something wrong or screwed up, he would chuckle a little bit and show you how to do it,” survey technician Brian Retz said.
Like the man it’s named after, the Catlett will get the job done with the latest in high-tech equipment mapping waterways from the Inner Harbor to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Source: WBALTV11
