For Services and Resources in French Polynesia

The Tahiti Cruisers Guide is brought to you by Julien Desmont from Xperimental and Chuck Houlihan from Jacaranda. Starting as an idea based on the very successful Panama City Cruisers guide, it has evolved into 200+ pages of information on vendors and services throughout French Polynesia. In January 2018, we added GPS coordinates and links to Google Maps to assist in locating businesses.

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Especially thankful to John (SV Mary Ann II) and Steve (SV Ocean Star) for their huge effort in supplying a vast amount of information for the guide.

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Last update: 27 Mar 2024

Haulout

Techinmarine

2023-06-11 01:14:33 UTC

Island: Tahiti

TechniMarine
Address is the end of Fare Ute but to haul out you must approach from the pass east of Papeete due
to the low bridge between Fare Ute and Muto Uta. Email: exploitation@technimarine.pf  tel 689 40 43 02 22.
Manager speaks english.
Use VHF channel 09 when approaching lifts

For places to stay off the boat close to the yard see Hostels / Hotels

Have two travel lifts one is 75 metric tonnes, the other 300 metric tonnes. The smaller may not be appropriate for the width of some cats.
You can do any amount of the work yourself you wish. It is very convenient to all marine suppliers available in FP.

Electric and water are metered. But a few years ago they started charging a daily surcharge for vendors that are not supplied by the yard.

They have welders including TIG and MIG welding. They can spray in the yard (depending of wind conditions) including polyurethane. Staff are friendly and the facilities looked good for toilet and shower
blocks.

6-2023 SV Kiapa Nui We just finished an 11 day stay at Technimarine, our 7th time there, and can happily report that under the new ownership and current management, the yard is orders of magnitude better than it was been in the past.  Unlike before, the yard’s focus is now clearly on cruising yachts.  They reorganized the parking layout to allow more space, and the preferred upwind locations, for “our” boats and to keep ample separation from any fishing boats they may also be servicing.  

The two operation managers are Teama (logistics) and Matahi (yard operations).  Both speak excellent English, are professional, responsive, and experienced.  The yard director is Sebastien.  He speaks fair English, is extremely experienced, and now personally drives the travel lifts to ensure the best possible operation.  

All managers repeatedly came aboard to inspect the quality of work.   At one point Sebastien directed a small army of workers to redo a project we were not 100% satisfied with.  There was no additional cost to us.  Despite it being late on a Friday afternoon, the workers kept at it literally as we were being launched, and for a few hours after while we were moored in the ways, to make sure we left the yard satisfied and on schedule.

We had the yard remove our old bottom paint, do some glass work, and to some cosmetic painting, amongst other projects.  They were careful while sanding the bottom, following our specs and instructions, and at one point had 5 workers on our boat.  The workers were friendly, focused, productive, and were careful to always leave the area clean when they finished.  

The glasswork and cosmetic painting was world class. I say that as someone with prior work experience on super yachts.  Victor is especially skilled and meticulous at this kind of work.  If he is on your project you may pay for a few more hours than if someone else were doing the work, but he’s worth it.  

Some of the work was done on quote and some on hours/materials.  They reviewed the bill with us in the middle of our stay and of course at the end.  The bill was detailed, organized, in English, and while expensive, we found the rates fair for the quality of work.

One negative are the facilities for those of us that live aboard while working.  The bathrooms are frankly horrible.  Not dirty in a “gross" way, but dirty in a boat-yard dirt way, full of roaches, and the toilet seat was broken.  Sometimes there was no toilet paper nor soap.  The showers are cold water only.  If these are primary concerns of yours you will not like the yard, or at least not like staying there, but we were there to work so as long as the toilets flushed and the showers had water we were ok.

In summary, the yard finished the work on time and within budget.  The quality was excellent, the staff friendly, and they clearly value us as customers.  Based on some past experiences, we originally had plans to go to a different yard, but after a frank discussion with Teama, we hesitantly chose Technimarine.  Now we're glad we did.  I strongly recommend Technimarine.

8-22 They carry PropSpeed coating for propellers.

8-2022 SV Jamala We’ve just had many layers of antifoul sanded off, the water line raised, red and white stripe repainted. Prop speed added. Excellent, professional work and service provided at Technimarine in Tahiti.

1-2021 SV Barracuda of Islay
We lifted out at Technimarine in January 2021 to do some technical work and antifoul the boat. Florent is the point contact for yachts wanting to lift out. He speaks excellent english. They provided clear written instructions for lifting out. On our lift day we arrived early and were immediately lifted out by an extremely professional team. The boat blocked off exactly as we needed it and within an hour of arriving we were at work. We were provided with an english speaking point of contact called Teama for anything we needed. We did our own antifouling but we did need help with repairing a hydraulic ram. Teama found the necessary part and had another manufactured at Polyindustries and then arranged the welding and testing. They kept to the planned schedule and had us back in the water on time. They wanted to ensure our experience was good and found solutions to help us. This is a highly professional boat yard and we have no reservations recommending them.

10-2020 Numerous reports in the FP FB group with warnings for Catamarans hauling out that needed to
repair damaged keel or bottom. This has to do with how the Cats are blocked
Comment #1
FYI they had an incident with an FP or Lagoon (I forgot which) in May/June 2019 while we were there.
They needed to repair the forward corner of a keel so they only blocked the aft 2/3. That resulted in the
aft edge of the keel being forced up through the hull causing significant damage. I assume that's partly
why they want the plans now but regardless hopefully this info helps prevent a similar problem for you if
you're facing a similar repair... and they dinged that boat's bow with the travel lift while moving another
yacht.
Comment #2 I was hauled at the same time as well. Good size crack and what was worse, the owner had
to leave the country right away after it happened
Comment #3
They cracked the hull of the cat next to us in April.... similar situation
#4 Yard is requiring a document from Lagoon in how to block a Lagoon that needs to repair damaged
keel area.

5-2019 SV Nehenehe
We worked with Teama at Technimarine. We had our waterline raised, light sanding with new bottom paint, and struts painted with LP paint. This is a difficult review to write because everyone at Technimarine worked hard to complete the work nearly on time; including a full day over the weekend which is highly unusual to have done by this yard. While I truly liked Teama as a person VERY much…. He proved to be completely inept at his job as project manager, (he is new to his job). I would strongly recommend that you work with someone else. The long story is the following…. Teama did not track well with any of the project details, he either forgot things or got things mixed up. He said that supplies were ordered but they had not, he said the exact same bottom paint had been found and seemed to say that it had arrived on site, it had not. When I stopped by a week before the start of work… he said he had still forgotten to order the supplies! He then scrambled to try and find bottom paint, eventually found some, when it arrived it was not a paint we could use. Then just before work started….he still had forgotten the epoxy primer…. This process went on, and on…. They failed to haul the boat on time, they delayed three times, one of which was with 30 minutes notice and we were already underway in the pass when Teama called to cancel. When we finally arrived for the haul out we had to motor up and drift back down the river for three hours while we waited. After we discovered the incorrect bottom paint….. It was forced on me to make four trips and ten hours’ time trying to personally return the bottom paint to their supplier. There are a lot more aspects to our difficulties at Technimarine than I wish to bore you with. In short it seemed that everyone else there was competent at their jobs and worked overtime to make up for Teama’s numerous mistakes. All the other employees were efficient and made the effort to make us satisfied. While they easily could have been much better; I must rate this business a 5 out of 10