I agree with colotandem since we are off-road tandemists also.

With such a grinder gear selected, you might consider less concern about being clipped in, this will give you options to easily step out. Start on the arch, rather than ball of your foot. Not perfect but it can save your stokers butt and your hearing. The other thing that helps us, especially off-road, is have your stoker hold the pedals flat for the second as you get up and seated. This will take a touch of practice and some balance. Forgot this is on a Davinci. Therefore the stoker can not hold the pedals like on a fixed timing bike.

My guess would be that the captain must keep the rear brake / wheel locked up, so he can use the pedal as a step without moving, get situated, release the brake while adding power. Yes it will require some balance.

As for climbing at stupid slow speeds. For us, both on-road and off-road, the stoker has to remain almost invisible except for pedal power. If they are tugging on the bars in any movement except dead straight the captain will be sawing the bars left and right. During group rides we see this a lot. I guess it takes practice and as much as we don't like it, some days we just do rides of climbing and descending the same section over and over.

PK