
I love mucking about on boats, always have. As comfortable as I feel delving into any project, in reality, I mostly stumble through most tasks. Learning evi has been a joy, even when contorting my body into positions, blindly reaching into an oily void searching for the important nut I reminded myself not to drop…again. The mechanical, electrical, rigging, plumbing, carpentry aspects all pose different challenges. Upon becoming overwhelmed, I often search for simple tasks to achieve what I call “small victories” and this is why I frequently do the dishes.
One thing that has elevated the difficulty of any task at hand is language. A Swedish built boat, completely refit by an Italian in 2013, bought by Germans and sailed extensively in the Mediterranean (how many different tongues are spoken on those coasts?), and sold in New Zealand. I know, you may be saying NZ speaks English, and yes but with a unique vernacular.
On evi many systems, panels, valves, drawers, etc are labeled and that label is in German. Even with our in-house German translator (Hannah majored in German), it is still confusing. Here are some classics…

Very organized nav station drawers…I guess?

I know that…Anchor winch! And….I dunno?

Errr….I dunno. Looks important though, all that red!?!

Interesting. OK…I get some of this.

Guessing here. Zweibien=onions? Gewürze=potato? Knabber, Susses…I dunno as the bins are empty.

I can figure these out in the engine room. Unfortunately, there are a couple of dozen pumps, filters, belts, and hoses that I’ll trace and relabel.

Great! Greek!! A whole new alphabet to learn. I figured this one out by using context.

All these manuals, so perfectly organized come in a mixture of German and Italian. They are full of individual operating manuals for each component and some are in English many are not. Unfortunately, the hand-drawn schematics for every system from the refit are in Italian and they are beautiful…If only I could read them.


Italian schematics with German corrections. No problem!
And finally….a label I can understand and a small victory!

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