A similar thing has been happening to me as well and might be related. Gnucleus will find a host which lists initially as busy, and then enters into the "waiting to retry" mode. After a long while, it is still retrying and when I check the extended info, it shows that it has timed out - but the transfer window still indicates that Gnucleus is retrying, instead of saying unable to connect.
I have had this occur with Bearshare, Gnucleus, Limewire and Morpheus hosts.