Demopolis... Finally!

Yeah baby, after being setback 5 weeks due to lock closures I have finally made it through two of the twelve between Mobile Bay and the Tennessee River.
The day started with a couple of scares, normally when I start the engine I first need to warm the ignitors in order for the engine to fire up. This consists of turning the ignition key to the ignitor position located just prior to the start position in the key rotation and normally a buzzer sounds. This morning the buzzer wasn't sounding, plus when I tried cranking nothing happened. The silence of the engine not cranking was sickening. I thought we were in for a long day of sitting on the side of the Tombigbee at mile 164.3 waiting on a tow or a miracle worker to solve my dilemma. Well I tried one last thing, I switched back to my good battery, which I had already tried the ignitor position but didn't hear the buzzer and I still didn't hear it but cranked the engine anyway... well guess what, it started. Plop-plop fizz-fizz, or in this case it's crank-crank rumble-rumble oh what a relief it is. Right away I noticed the control panel gauges were all working except for the rpms. All I can think of is that when I wiggled the brittle wires at the base of the mast last night it not only solved my anchor light problem, it solved part of my control panel problem but also created my no buzzer problem.
Another problem I had prior to starting the engine involves the transmission gear oil. During my morning check I noticed the oil level was very very low on the dip stick, I had failed to check it the previous day. The only oil I had on-board was for the engine, I had no idea what the previous owner had been using. I checked with Tim, via text message, (Tim was the mechanic I used back in Melbourne) and he said to use the engine oil even though it wasn't the correct oil for the job but since I was in the middle of nowhere it was better than nothing. I haven't heard back from the previous owner about what to use yet. Later in the day I remembered a couple of other people to check with and they said the quarter cup of oil I poured in would not hurt anything. Just change the oil when you get home.
So far so good, now we are ready to pull the anchors up so we fed some slack to the bow anchor and pulled on the aft anchor rode until we were directly over it, then I applied some reverse throttle and it broke free from the bottom and was pulled back on-board. Now we ease up until we are directly over the bow anchor and I applied forward throttle but it would not release. Tried again but it still held tight. Tried from different angles and still no luck. One last mother-of-all-anchor-break-loose attempts from a desperate new owner of a 30 year old boat sitting in the middle of nowhere and finally it broke free and we were on our way. Oh yeah, I'm feeling much better now.
We pulled away from our anchorage at 8:15 EDT and passed two tugs and three pleasure crafts and one herd of wild pigs.
We reached the dam at 2:38 EDT and the lock attendant said it'd be about 30 minutes due to maintenance. I held my breath hoping that they weren't having trouble again but about 20 minutes later the gates opened wide... almost as wide as my smile.
We are staying at the marina tonight, it's just three miles above the dam, Last night we were eaten up by skeeters and other biting and blood sucking bugs. Tonight we can keep the windows closed and run the air conditioner.