Can anyone offer some advice on the lock picking puzzle on the ship? I even looked up a walkthrough and found a picture of the solution but not matter what I do it wont let me pass! This is getting incredibly frustrating...

I've solved just a couple days ago. The secret is that each of those vertical bars has an inlet or something like that (There may be a better word for it but my english vocabulary has its limitations).

Anyway, you must shape the wire in a way that every inlet is aligned with a horizontal bar in the upper section of the keyhole. Once that bar can move freely the puzzle is solved.

If you find my explanation too confusing to help you PM me and I'll dig an old save to use an screenshot to make myself better understood.

I had the exact same problem, even after watching a walkthrough video. Joppo's advice was very helpful. There is a thin black space above the gold components of the locks. This space is located above those gold components, where their matching silver components hang. When you insert the wire, there are two general positions for the wire: in the lock most of the way and in the lock all the way (You have to click on the looped end of the wire to get it in the lock all of the way). What you are trying to do is line up the thin black space by the silver components with the void between the silver and gold components. In other words, you want to create a line of entirely blank space, which appears only when you insert the correctly configured wire into the lock *all of the way*.

Of course, perhaps you figured this puzzle out months ago?