Starting to have a hard time getting into reverse

Let's start out with what happened. Earlier this summer, during my cruising the BC Coast, I started having some issues shifting C-Traveler into reverse. She was not shifting smoothly, and would grind the gears, but eventually I would get reverse. This was an intermittent problem and continued on a couple more shorter cruises over summer. Eventually I decided to replace the shift and throttle cables. While this seemed to make the remote control (throttle) easier to move, it still did not resolve the shift issue, which seemed to be getting worse. Going into reverse would involve grinding gears until the shift completed. Doing a little more digging and trouble shooting under the engine cowling, I found the shift rod bracket, on the front of the engine under the power head, loose. Google and YouTube has been my friend with all this. Some research there mentioned the possibility of the single hold down screw coming loose. That in fact was my issue. After removing the air intake and inline fuel filter, I was able to barely access that screw to tighten it up. That seemed to fix the problem. For a short time....Read more