For the first half of our last practice, the boat was wayyyy down to starboard; the coxswain kept telling ports to drop and starboards to raise oars, so as a starboard I was forcing my oar against the water all the way through the recovery. (Made for a nasty palm blister!) When that didn’t fix the set, I leaned to the port for the second half of practice. This worked but there must have been a better way to do it. My coach said her lineup was bad but was there anything I could’ve done?
In that instance, I’d say probably not since your coach admitted her lineup wasn’t very good. The set is a byproduct of a lot of different things happening at any given time but sometimes the biggest factor is the group of people in the boat. Leaning to one side, even though it fixes the problem in the short term, is never a good idea because it makes the other seven rowers think “Oh, whatever I’m doing right now fixed the set, so I’m going to keep doing that forever” and then they end up ingraining new bad habits because it’s likely that they didn’t change anything and only felt the change you made, which wasn’t really a change at all.