Taken forever to go thru rudder trauma on Little Gull - finally ending up with a slightly different rudder than most but hung just the same as everybody elses.

FYI. Made up and had cast in bronze a TWO PART gudgeon fitting.
The idea is that it will clamp around the rudder shaft.
One side is meant to stay in place on the keel while the other is taken off to allow the rudder to be lifted up and moved out sideways to drop it. The bolts are long enough to hold both pieces - but the static side is held on with nuts that turn in onto the fiberglass of the keel - then the other half is put on those bolt ends and snugged with more nuts. The rudder will drop on one side of the shoe, port side only in this case. Just came out that way.

If you remember which side to take off, it would be a matter of just unscrewing the nuts to release the gudgeon effect. If underwater you wouldn't want to drop that half of the gudgeon. Nuts you can replace.

Once the sleeve bearing is removed from the top of the rudder tube, there may be enough room, once the rudder is below the shoe, to move the rudder around a bit and away from the fitting. Don't know yet.