During our repairs we’ve made some experiences with yacht services in Tahiti and the Societies, which we’d like to share with other cruisers.
We cannot recommend the haul-out facilities at Technimarine in Papeete. It’s expensive, the personnel was unfriendly to rude and Pitufa still bears the rust marks from the sanding of rusty fishing vessels in this boat yard. The only advantage of Technimarine is the vicinity of chandleries and hardwarestores. Our second time on the hard in Raiatea Carenage was much cheaper and the out-haul was easy to organise with the flexible office people. Having said that, there’s also downsides: the area gets swampy in rains (be careful with mosquitoes, we caught dengue fever there), the narrow approach next to iron rails in the water’s not exactly easy and the yard features the smelliest toilet we’ve ever encountered.
Getting parts of the rigg replaced by Api yachting (Papeete) was also a special adventure. Instead of the promised three weeks it took three months in the end to get all parts delivered (we did the replacing and tuning ourselves), the rigger didn’t respond to e-mails or phone calls (especially nice after receiving a 60 % deposit) and wasn’t a pleasure to deal with in general. He was very expensive, did not quite deliver what we asked for, but at least the quality of the wires, terminals, toggles and turnbuckles seems okay.
Fortunately there’s now new competition in town: Matthieu (a fellow cruiser we’ve known since the Gambier) is setting up a shop and will soon start work (contact him in Taina)!
