The helm sits behind the steering wheel and turns the wheel's movement into something that moves the outboard or the rudder. On most small boats that's a push-pull cable, like the Teleflex or SeaStar rotary cables, whose spiral end winds through the helm. Older boats often use cable and drum steering, a wire wound around a drum and run around the boat on pulleys, and bigger boats use hydraulic steering, where the helm is a pump that pushes oil to a ram.

In this video I replace a Teleflex / SeaStar steering cable and helm: removing the old cable, the steering wheel and the helm, and installing the new ones. Each cable type locks into the helm differently, with either an R clip or a screw. Depending on the shape of the hull and how corroded the old steering is it can be simple or a bit tricky, but it only needs simple hand tools.