We had a little [big?] motor trouble on day 1 at the end

This is Mike, from TowBoatUS. But let me back up a little. After 3+ hours of motoring partly at -8 mph and partly at 20 mph, all running pretty smoothly, I was putting along at 5. We reserved a spot at the marina which was 5 miles away. Deb awoke and called the lady who is doing her med. transcription while we are gone. We were in mid channel and she was asking deb to listen to the Dr's recording to interpret what he said, so i offered to stop the motor so she could hear better, not knowing it could hurt to be drifting in the channel... after a while I asked deb to postpone her conversation until we got to the dock as we were only a mile or two away now. Went to start the motor and THUNK it would not turn over. 1st thinking it was battery problem I tried using our massive jump battery and then hooking our four boat batteries in different ways.
We were now driftng toward the beach. I did not want to use our main anchor as it is operated by a windlass which uses power i was not sure of, so i deployed the 2nd anchor [of 3]. After wondering if we were dragging the anchor toward the beach i set a mark on the gps and found we were staying put. After a bit more tinkering, I called boat US towing [I am so glad i bought the top of the line tow insurance.]

From Deb: Mike came out and tied up along side (while talking on his cellphone). We thought he would just tow us in to our marina and we arranged with the marina to tie up to the fuel dock since they would be closed when we got in. Mike offered to see if we could fix it instead. First he tried jumping it with his battery cables hooked to his
boat (more power)-no go. Sandy thought it was the starter, explaining when putting in the new motor he had a new starter but the old one was working OK and didn't change it. Mike offered to change it now. What a deal. The starter is at the bottom of the motor and requires either fitting in the area next to the motor or hanging over the top of the motor to reach down there. Mike just hopped down there and started unbolting things. The starter was changed but still a no go. Next try was cleaning out the sparkplugs and yes, there was water in the cylinders. All the sparkplugs were pulled and dried, the engine run to clear out the water and everything put back together. We were praying a lot. Turned the key
and it started!!!! Yeah!! Mike packed up and wrote us out our paperwork and was off on another call. He spent close to 2 hours helping us.
We were able to get to the marina on our own power.
The Solomons is really beautiful. The marina was very nice and there was a West Marine within walking distance! There was also a boatyard across the creek that had the sparkplugs we needed. They had exactly 8 (amazing, that was how many we needed!) and they were only $18 each but for Sandy only $16 each. (Two broke putting them in so we will have to find more on our way). It was an expensive 2 days. It was also very hot.