In Satan's evil Clutches

No, I can't be stopped. The puns just come to me, I am helpless to resist.
When we started looking for a boat we had two maybe hree requirements.
1. It had to be floating
2. It needed an running engine so we could bring it home
3. Pretty

The boat passed all three requirements.

Over the last year, we took the boat out several times and the only issue we really had beyond the overheating issue was the boat would creep forward in neutral. After some instigation it looks like the culprit is the shifter linkages are too loose to hold the shifter lever in the neutral zone. The lever is mounted in the cockpit and under normal conditions should point at about 9o'clock for neutral, 7 for forward and 11 for reverse. The weight of the lever however is enough to nudge the forward clutch pack and thus start to engage forward. On this transmission the knuckling over threshold is set towards the far end of the lever's travel (in both directions) so that there is little to no resistance from neutral to almost fully engaged forward or reverse. This means the that unless there is a positive stop or detent built into the shifter linkage assembly, there is nothing to really hold the transmission in neutral- thus creeping forward or backwards is a matter of the cockpit lever and linkages not balancing the transmission's shift lever at it's neutral position.

I've started adjusting the forward clutch pack tension gear to see if I can move the knuckling closer to the neutral zone, hopefully adding enough resistance to prevent a little lever slop/weight from engaging forward.

The transmission is as far I can tell a Paragon 1XE model- fully manual. The cover plate has been removed, the engine is to the right. The little bolt right in the middle of the image is the lockscrew that holds the screw collar in position like a collar around the threaded pressure plate (immediatly to its right).
The bolt is seated in one of many holes around the end face of the pressure plate)

To adjust:
Back the bolt out almost all of the way- it will clear the holes and still be able to sit in the screw collar (other wise it will most likely fall into the bottom of the transmission; a magnetic reacher tool helped me retrieve it and the lock washer when I dropped it)
Turn the collar clockwise (when viewing the engine from the flywheel) to tighten collar and thus increase the threshold force required to lock the transmission in forward. Line the lockscrew up with the desired hole and be sure it is seated properly and tighten. You will know if it's not in a hole if it doesn't tighten all the way back down as far as it was. It's probably best to adjust by just one or two increments at a time as there is a fine line between 'ok' and 'too tight' which could wear down the clutch discs prematurely.

Tip: Wiggle the transmission lever foreward/backward while trying to turn the screw collar. Since there is no neutral lock, this will help find the zone where there is no pressure on the forward or reverse clutch packs. Try this before sticking tools in there to pry and force the collar to spin. It should spin very freely when there is no pressure from the lever.

I have adjusted the forward setting and it seems to be working at least from the testing at the transmission lever. The weight/balance of the cockpit shift lever is still in need of adjusting and I'll have to wait to test the adjustment with the engine running to make sure it won't slip at higher RPMs.