Okay, this is the first batch ever, and we're very stupid, but learning
quickly. (Please forgive us if this has been answered before.)

We must have filled the carboy too full last night (we were transferring the
wine from the primary fermenter into the carboy for secondary fermenting)
because the fermentation lock was full of wine this morning. So I thought
I'd be able to just pop it out clean it up, resterilize it, and pop it back
in. Nope--top came out of the stopper, stopper stuck in neck of carboy. Then
we fooled around with it trying to unstick the stopper, and voila, the
stopper went down instead of up, and is now lying motionless at the bottom
of the carboy.

Help! Now what?

Do we have to syphon the wine back out into a new carboy, or do we just buy
a new fermentation lock and let the sterilized rubber stopper lie at the
bottom of the carboy until we syphon the wine out for the stabilization
step?

Any help/advice would be very much appreciated--I'm really dreading going
back to our local wine-making store and having to confess my sins to the
Nils Crane behind the till.