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.
Downloading the guide and GPS map coordinates will facilitate using the guide offline. The coordinates will work for either Maps.me (best for Papeete) or Google Maps.
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.
The guide is a community effort. Updates and new additions are greatly appreciated. If you find the guide useful or find something that needs updating please drop us a note at tahiticruisersguide (AT) gmail.com
Last update: 10 Dec 2024
Canvas Work
Ocean Sails Tahiti
2019-09-24 19:28:33 UTC
Island: Tahiti
Michel 689-8771-1686 (oceansailstahiti@gmail.com)
9-2019 SV Sugar Shack
We had Oceans Sails (Michel Pegart Maitre Voilier) do repair work on our sail bag and he did not do a good job. After visiting his sail loft and speaking to him about types of threads used and process, we felt confident he’d do good work. We asked him to quote the repairs on our sail bag (strengthen and reinforce) and small spinnaker (we blew out clew). The sail bag was the priority as we had a backup spinnaker.
With the sail bag we asked him to patch the small holes, reinforce all stitching, reinforce the batten sleeves, and re-attach our name flap which came off. He said it would be “no problem, easy job, and could be done in a few weeks at very little money.” Several weeks later, my husband went to pick it up and paid $600 (more than a little money to us, but our bad for not getting an exact quote first). When my husband went to install the sail bag, he noticed several areas had the new stitching already coming out (Michel failed to lock stitch the beginning and ends). In addition, in several places the stitching was crooked when it should have been straight. Unfortunately, we had guests coming and needed the sail bag up. So, my husband finished with the install before we had to leave.
In addition, with the spinnaker he said it would cost well over $1,000 to repair or he would have to cut it down and charge a little less. This is an 18-year-old spinnaker so it was not worth the cost to repair. We took it back.
We were very disappointed in the work from Ocean Sails. We had higher expectations since he had several good reviews, the loft was professional and he “said all the right things.” Very poor craftsmanship and work.
Airborne 9-2018We had him take our sails down and fix up any tears or chafing on them (14,500 nm), and he fixed our SS bracket that lifts our main sail (rounded and polished it to stop the cutting action it had at the head of the main when it was down), he rounded the ends of our battens so that they now slip into the pockets with little effort. He fixed the lazy jack sail bag that had gotten frayed on a passage when the second reef line became tangled around the end. He did a great job of repairing it and making sure that it did not look like a repair at all. It was a brand new North Sail cradle (they don’t like it when you refer to it as a bag), so we wanted to make sure it did not look like it had been repaired, and Michel made it look better than new He also is building an enclosure for the fly bridge stair wells on our L450 to stop rain from soaking the rear cockpit. He speaks English and French and is very personable. He charges about what everyone else in Tahiti charges (about $60/hr). He is very busy in high season, but seems to have more time in low season.