I can tell you that in my case is was not just "slight tightness" - it was a situation where you had to apply a lot of force to steer. This situation caught me in the middle of a passage from Israel to Kastelorizo (Greece). First the auto pilot stopped steering and it quite quickly degraded to a stage where it was hard to steer for more than an hour or so (luckily we were 4 on board). Since at that time there was no internet in Kastelorizzo, only in Kos I was able to search for for this solution. It did not work immediately - first application helped only a bit, but after a second application and a night rest it went smooth again with no problems since.