throttle positioning to find neutral hard after been running the boat..?

I just bought this boat, a 1995 ski centurion falcon, it has a new engine that was put in 2004 a mercruiser 5.7. the boat runs great, no problems whatsoever. although, when i bought the boat the owner told me that sometimes you had to "jiggle" the throttle for the boat to find neutral before you can start the engine and he wasnt kidding. this is a regular occurence. everytime to start the boat it requires messing with the throttle to find nuetral although it "clicks" into neutral and i can even pull out the neutral nob but unless you jiggle the throttle the boat wont start. any ideas? possible throttle cable replacement?

Could maybe need a new cable, or maybe the throttle is bad? Sounds like the throttle is maybe going bad. If you have to jiggle the throttle to make it start, your neutral safety switch on the transmission might be going bad. It grounds out the engine not letting it start unless the throttle cable is in neutral.

It sounds like the safety neutral switch that is mounted on the trany needs to be adjusted

i will check that out.. thank you!

strange your timing on posting this. i just got off the water and we had this problem. the boat would not start because it was not truely in neutral, even though the throttle was verticle and clicked into neutral. i had no idea what was going on thought i hit the kill switch by accident. well eventually we poped it in and it fired right up. not cool but glad we werent stranded in the water. also i miss drive when going from reverse to forward. sometimes it can take up to 3 shifts to hit forward a real pain when docking. my boat... a 2004 centurion t5 with black scorpion 330. hmm