La/stryker

have a htm ss24 with the factory 565ci (650hp) and the last 3-4 times I took it out I noticed that it takes .5 to 1 second to actually go into gear when the shift lever is pushed fwd. its almost instant when putting it in reverse btw. two days ago was out running the boat for about 10 mins and when I tried to plane out from an idle half way through the plane out the motor reved up and the boat set back down in the water. I caught it in time and did not over rev engine but in was like I pulled it into neutral with the throttle mashed. no weird noises or sounds and reverse still works fine but no fwd gear. we disconnected the shift linkage in the engine compartment and manually pushed the cable as far as it would go into fwd nothing happened. I drained the outdrive oil tonight and no metal to speak of on the magnet. just very little tiny tiny shavings that ive seen before on this one and on other outdrives that have been told as normal.
any ideas? did it break a fwd only gear? is that possible? is there any reason or possibility that it poped out of gear because of rigging? its worked perfectly for the last 30hrs since I bought it until this happened. thoughts!

89notch

My boat did this exact thing. Ended up being broken gears in the upper. I had to drive back to the dock in reverse.