I finally managed to go for a sail with Gypsy Rose this morning. The weather was showery with 15 knot winds from the south west gusting to 25 knots. High tide was at 10:10 am and she floated about an hour and a half before high water on the 3.5 meter tide of today. I went to the boat at eight o'clock to install the outboard and hook up the depth sounder. I was accompanied by John Harvey who had helped a great deal in completing Gypsy Rose. We motored off the mud berth at about 8:30 and proceeded out into the Northern Wairoa river. I lowered the drop keel and slid the rudder blade down, then we raised the sail. To start with we raised the full sail but it was immediately obvious that it was too much, so we dropped two panels and sailed Northward towards Dargaville. We tacked around and headed southwards against the current close reaching towards the jetty at Ruawai, as my wife Rosemary was there waiting to take some photographs. The GPS showed that we were averaging about 3 knots over the ground and we estimated the adverse current at about 2 knots. Gypsy Rose was proving to be very tender and heeled excessively in the gusts so we dropped another two panels leaving the three triangular top panels set. This did not reduce our speed appreciably but did reduce heeling to manageable proportions.
After the photo session off the jetty we sailed downriver towards Poto Point and the entrance to the Kaipara Harbor still averaging about 3 knots over the ground. We tacked around and broad reached back towards Ruawai, we saw a maximum of 7.6 knots on the GPS for a moment or two and averaged between 6.5 and 7 knots over the ground ( about two knots of current with us but reducing towards high water). We continued to sail backwards and forwards trying the boat on various tacks and angles to the wind to get a feel of how she was performing. She was light on the helm but carried a small amount of weather helm, she was slow in stays but we learned how to tack her after a few missed tacks. We returned to the mud berth at about 11:00 am after an interesting sail.
Conclusions are that she is very tender and needs more weight on the bottom of the drop keel, approximately 100 kilos should make a noticeable difference. This can be done by bolting a wing bulb on the bottom of the existing keel. She is fast and reasonably close winded, but I will need more sailing experience with her to learn her limits and get the best out of her. I will be hauling her out for the winter in the next week or so, so will not have the opportunity to sail her again until the spring when I return from Australia where I spend the winters. I hope to have the keel modified and be ready for the Tall Ships next January.