Dear Kim,
In the past I have tried everything to get round the stiff steering problem and spent a fortune on various marine engineers trying to fix it. In the end a few years back I found a like buried in the JP Steering website to a page where you could order new bearings. These arrived very quickly, we lifted the boat out of the water had the new bearings fitted and hey presto perfect steering again. Believe it or not it took me years to get to this point. So my advice would be to just bite the bullet and order the parts direct and have them fitted, which turned out to be a very simple job. Later today I will try to find the link.
Kind regards
John Donald
Highland Rhapsody
Moored in Arisaig
Tel:07736960074