'88 30hp Evinrude Woes

I'm down here at the beach and it's close to low tide. I took the boat out, poling it into deeper water. I got to where I could run the big motor and I idled along for a while before it got shallow again. I kicked up a bunch of black mud from the bottom, so I gave it a little gas to get through that little shallow spot. It didn't get me through so I cut the motor and got back to the deep water.

I cranked it back up, and it "coughed" a puff of muddy water out the pisser and died. I cranked it up again and it wasn't pissing, so I cut it, pulled it out the water, and made sure it wasn't caked in mud.

I put it back in and tried to crank it, and something came loose. There's something rattling when the line comes off the flywheel, and the line doesn't pull back on like it should. This might be unrelated because it's been difficult at times to get the line to catch before this. It'll take a couple pulls before it catches enough to try and crank it, and it's usually when there's 3-4 feet of line out.

I don't know if these two problems are related or not, but the flywheel rattling has me stranded. Any advice before I take the top off the flywheel? Any links to instructions? My boat's floating on the incoming tide tied to the dock 3 miles from the landing, so I guess I'm waiting until low tide when it's sitting on mud so I can see where anything goes if I drop it...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Can't help on the running issue, but I may have some info on the starting problem. I had to replace my pin and plastic piece that catches the gears when I try to start the motor (8 HP Evinrude). The little plastic piece had worn down and my motor had the same symptoms as you described, wouldn't recoil and seemed like it wouldn't catch when I tried to pull the rope. Was a $10.00 fix and hasn't caused any problems since.