never been on your brand, but in gerneral:
there should be very little effort needed to steer. something is wrong

i would presume something got bent (or a screw came lose) if in fact the helm was ok to start but ended up hard to control.

on my cats (3 different ones over the years) it is almost always a case of the locking screw that controls the rake of the rudder (forward /under the boat and aft/away from the boat) has come lose and the rudder is to angled to far back... causing weather helm.