no worries about Capt's tripping the boat. I have been around long enough, if I call in and say I feel unsafe with this Capt, I get transferred. The guys I am with now are top notch. I've even gotten guys transferred over not shutting the doors while we are shifting. I don't like the idea of drowning....
and who said anything about loosing steering
I hammered out the pin in the hydraulic ram, I keep two plugs zip tied on the stern so I disconnected the hoses and plugged the hydraulic lines... we had the rudder @ 90degrees to the Stbd, the other rudder worked fine.
Might have taken me 3-4 minutes tops.... The capt was steering just fine. I chained the rudder in place and used a chain hoist to pull her tight, we were secure and worked the rest of the day. Course it was like draggin a barn door, but whatever, least it wasn't kicking our stern either way.
The only time we 'lost' steering for any length was when our steering jog melted the contacts.... it was giving an electrical signal to go hard to port. No biggie, we just needed to figure which of the 9 jogs was the screwed up one
hard part was we were doing 10 knots when the rudder swung 45degrees to port, hah.