Dakar Tortue & Sea Invest, Senegal

After the deepening campaign of 2013 and 2014, the self-propelled rock cutter suction dredger Leonardo da Vinci visited the port of Dakar for a second time as from June 2019.

The cutter suction dredger was used to create a site of almost 30 acres that had to be suited for fabricating 21 caissons for the Tortue offshore LNG hub.

In addition, we dredged a 1-km channel to a depth of -7.5 m to facilitate the transfer of the caissons to a location near the former slave island Ile de Gore. The caissons would be transported from there to the Tortue Offshore LNG hub of BP.

The presence of the dredging vessels of Jan De Nul in Dakar resulted in a second contract, this time for SEA INVEST, which operates the oil terminal as well as the bulk terminal in the port of Dakar.

The Leonardo da Vinci dredged up to a design depth of -10.3m and -12m for the quays of Mole 8 and Mole 9, respectively. During the dredging works, we had to be very careful to avoid that the dredging vessels would damage the structure of the quay walls. Therefore, the dredging works closest to the quay wall of Mole 8 were executed by the trailing suction hopper dredger Pinta.