Castawayll Great Loop: January 22, 2014 Wednesday Mile 223

0700 Woke up to beautiful sunshine and very cold. Water coming out of facet on the dock was frozen. Started the generator and ran it out of gas, started the motor and idled it till warm, then cast off and motored out into the ICW at about 08:00. Boat motor suddenly quit in the middle of the ICW, put up the jib and sailed into the gas dock of the marina across the ICW down from our dockage. Filled the generator and other gas tanks for the boat motor. After doing multiple things with the boat motor and a couple of hours later Curt figured out the milky white liquid coming out of the boat motor carburetor sump was water in the fuel line. A month of the gas tanks sitting in the rain in Columbus accumulated water with the gas. Sooooo, after emptying 3 tanks of gas, yes expensive and refilling with good gas, the outboard boat motor ran like a top. While Curt was working on that motor, I was trying to call the Honda service center to see how to get the generator started after running it out of gas, with draining the oil, rocking the motor, pulling it 10 times with choke on and 10 times with choke off, I gave up. We called a local Honda generator repair shop, they were closing early today, so had 1 hour to get there with too far to walk or carry generator. Curt talked to the repair guy and he said try starting it by pulling on it 15-16 times with choke on. First pull it started. Hmm, my sore shoulder said more than that. After 5 hours at the fuel dock, we left in warm sunshine (high today in the 30's) at 1:30 in the afternoon with winds 5-10kts, so much for early start. Talked with a captain in the fuel dock about good anchorages for the night that we could reach by 5 pm. Made Hogstown Bayou by 5 pm but it took another hour to reach our anchorage in 5 ft. of a water with iron pipe stakes sticking up from the bottom thru out the bayou, existing in the same area we had to go thru to get to our anchorage. Long hour motoring holding our breath and saying lots of prayers. Only option at this point. We plan and once again God laughs and directs us to where he wants us to be. We anchored across the channel from the city park in 6 ft, hope the tide isn't very much or we're here till it comes in again. Four other boats were there, 3 Mac 25's moored, close to where we anchored and a large 40 ft. Ketch anchored in the channel, we ran a ground rocks or oysters as we went out around him so as to not catch his anchor line just scraping sound on the bottom of the boat and popped up the rudder. We're here, started the generator,turned the heater on and made supper. Kept watching to see if we were dragging anchor because we dropped our anchor pretty close to the other boats that were moored, not much room for the swing. Saw farther in the bayou a boat that sank and was left after covered halfway with water in the shallows.