Last time, I wrote about selecting a drilling line for a spudder. These lines will vary in size depending of the capacity of the machine. In this column, the subject will be the sand or bailing line. The sand line, as it is always called, get far less use than the drilling line. It is important, though, as it will handle the bailer on our rig, which removes the cuttings created by the drill tools in a slurry form.
Some older spudder rigs were called “two-line” — they had only a bull reel for the drill line and a sand reel for the sand line. On these rigs, the sand line could hoist individual sections of casing if it was not too heavy. I have seen rigs that had a divider on the sand reel, so when the bailer was detached the line could go to a small-diameter spool and give the sand line more capacity. This setup could also run drop pipe for test pumping or to install a submersible pump. When the casing handling was done, the line came across the divider onto a larger ball of line where it had less capacity but a much higher speed.