By MOLLY MURRAY • The News Journal • October 15, 2008
For more than 30 years, the lightship Overfalls sat in a slip off the Lewes & Rehoboth Canal.
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Time and tides surrounded the steel hull in mud -- holding the ship so tight its mooring lines were an unnecessary accessory.
Early Tuesday morning -- after 10 years of planning, fundraising, painting and patching -- the Overfalls slid out of its slip and was guided by two tugs into the canal.
Thus began a two-day, 275-mile journey to a shipyard in Norfolk, Va., where the hull will be patched and other repairs will be made.
"It was just so exciting," said Joan Reader, of Lewes, whose husband is serving as one of 10 support crewmen during the trip up the Delaware Bay and River, through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and into Chesapeake Bay.
The men -- all volunteers with the Overfalls Maritime Museum Foundation -- took generators to provide power while the ship is under way, plenty of food and lots of equipment to plug, patch and repair leaks or other problems on the voyage.
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