Outboard gear shear

This past Sunday was our first attempt to take Shadow from CIH to SB for the season. The crew was Alli and Robin, and despite the adventure, I think a decent time was had by most. 3kts of wind on the nose, and motoring, for some reason our speed kept dropping and the motor kept revving higher and higher. I turned it off to investigate and indeed the prop was only minimally engaged in forward and reverse. Knowing we weren't going to make it to SB under the circumstances, we turned around, initially heading for Ventura but then deciding we knew how to deal with things better at CIH. It was a run for most of the time, until the wind picked up and turned a little south just before we got there. We made it back in a whopping 6 hours, and not for lack of attentive sailing. We docked under sail, had some Thai, and I slept on the boat. The next morning I took the motor to Specialty Marine, where we took the lower unit apart and found the pinion gear, which engages both forward and reverse gears, was ground to a pulp. It took a day to get quotes for replacement gears, and now I've ordered them to be delivered directly to the mechanic. $200 in parts!!! Can you believe that?! I mean, it's just machined metal guys, get a grip!