Preparing for cyclone Gabrielle

February 23rd, 2024

The start of 2023 brought many adverse weather events to the upper North Island of New Zealand with Cyclone Gabrielle causing widespread devastation along the northern east coast of New Zealand in February 2023. For us, we brought in 2023 seeking shelter in Pomare Bay, Bay of Islands whilst we waited for adverse weather to pass. Not long after, we were seeing out another storm as we sought shelter in Opunga Cove, Bay of Islands. This storm brought serious flooding to parts of Auckland. We were beginning to wonder if we had made the right decision to move aboard a sailboat.

As soon as this weather event passed, we made our way to Paradise Bay, Urupukapuka in the Bay of Islands. We had not long anchored when Adam saw that a tropical cyclone was forming in the Coral Sea and we would need to think about what we were going to do. It was soon named Cyclone Gabrielle. It was one adverse weather event after the other. We decided to go back into the marina and strip Tāiko's exterior to reduce any windage. Cyclone Gabrielle was being reported as an unprecedented weather event for New Zealand and we were getting quite worried. However, we never envisaged the devastation that Cyclone Gabrielle would cause in our home town of Hawke's Bay and along the east coast of the North Island. If you want to see what we did to prepare, watch the video below:

You can also read more about our preparation on Adam's Skipper's blog: Preparing for Cyclone Gabrielle