When you think sports, tool or dive watch what are the attributes that resonate with you most? Is it the extra functions, the bezel, size or material of the watch or is it purely three hands and Mariana Trench depth ratings?
As a once upon a time divemaster then diving instructor & hyperbaric technician I have spent a good amount of time under pressure and have guided visitors with every imaginable “sub-whatever” on the market and I have to say diving is likely one of the most gentle use cases for a watch. The recreational dive limit is 40 metres or 130 feet, that’s 3.9 ATM/Bar and you are floating.
I couldn't believe I had these cards seems that a few are missing, but it has been 24 years since my first open water certification and these have traveled the globe with me.
I thought you all might get a kick out of a younger blonder version of myself. Fun fact, my coldest dive was in Lake Okanagan, January 1999. The water temperature was between 0 & 1 degree celsius ( 32-33.8F) and I was in a wetsuit.
The times have changed, but the Swiss watch industry still seems to be trapped in the lifestyle of the "Mad Men", Don Drapers of the 1960-70’s. Career men who lived their life in boardrooms and splurged on alcohol, suits, timepieces and dreamt of Sea Hunt holidays ravaging the underwater realm and night life alike. The fact is that the watch design and movement architecture still on offer to new brands and being delivered to customers hasn’t changed that much in 40-50 years. Could it be that this dusty and dated lifestyle portrayal continues to be recycled because it's a safe product image to play?
If so, I have to conspire that by playing it safe one would not have to make an investment in new mechanical engineering and technologies that offer far greater stability and better functionality. New developments are carefully released by the big groups with a nearly non-existent trickle down to smaller independents and micro-brands, ie: silicon escapements, although there are exceptions for those daring enough to take the chance and go it alone. For the few who go all-in on development there is opportunity to offer more to their community. For those playing it safe, dusty, dated movements encased in bulky disproportionate cases marketed as "innovative", "game changers" or "disruptive" are the top dollar gems to look forward to. The sports, tool and dive watch categories play best into this example, thick watches designed at a time when big and heavy was perceived as better.
But what about those lavish diving vacations to the Caribbean where these office warriors connect with their primal self to go diving and spearfish for dinner, with maximum water resistance on their wrist?
Ready for the hunt!
Is diving really that extreme? After all, a basic sports watch has upwards of 100m and beyond there are few pursuing those depths.
The way recreational dive tables work is that the first dive of the day would be your deepest and as a divemaster this meant my mornings started with a "deep dive". For those that are not advanced divers you are limited to 18 metres, but "advanced divers" are certified up to 30 metres and "deep divers" to 40 metres as per PADI. The mornings were advanced dives somewhere around 30 metres. I always kept the group a little shallower than that because all too often people get caught up in the moment, get narc'd (nitrogen narcosis) and seemingly drift deeper than the planned dive profile so myself and other dive staff would usually have to dip a little deeper.
One of the dive sites I would frequent. There was a beautiful coral finger that started shallow and dropped you off at the wall leaving you hanging above the abyss.
There are limits set because diving deeper than the recreational depth involves an entirely different form of dive planning to allow for decompression stops and depending on depth, mixed gas usage. However recreational diving is based on breathing regular air (21% oxygen & 79% nitrogen) and with one decompression stop called a safety stop, which usually happens at the 5 metre mark and this takes any guess work out of the dive. With the amount of dives taken I always took a safety stop as they reduce the chances of decompression sickness also called the bends, which is very rare, but likely the most extreme thing about diving. Nitrogen in the air breathed underwater is an inert gas that is not used by your body. When you breath air under pressure this nitrogen gets compressed into the blood stream and when coming up it must come out of its compressed state and exit your body through the lungs. When under pressure it is not an issue, however when you come up you must ascend in a controlled manner to allow this nitrogen to be slowly released from your system, if not it could escape into the tissue or cause a blockage similar to a stroke or paralysis.
Good content on this topic is limited, but here's a quick video of what decompression sickness does.
As stated, decompression sickness is quite rare in recreational diving and because of that it's very safe to dive, therefore I can say the only thing extreme and often times impressive aspect of diving was how quickly people could exhaust their tank of air. The excitement mixed with questionable fitness levels made for some interesting times underwater. However us divemasters were very conservative in finance and underwater as I recall my starting wage was $4.28/hour and therefore I was well trained to skip lunch to have enough liquid funds for happy hour. When underwater it was about staying streamlined, lowering your heart rate and sipping air to ensure enough reserve was in the tank for the extreme air guzzler of the group.
A photo I snapped back in circa 2004 at the office. I loved visiting these rays every week.
Underwater a person is in a space that is completely weightless when compensated for by their weight belt and BCD (buoyancy control device) and this means the forces of gravity can be completely offset. If one can contain their excitement or anxiety, then diving is a relatively gentle activity. Frantically waving a hand underwater when seeing something new is actually a slow motion exercise due to the weight of water so need to worry about the dynamic pressure. Above ground divers on vacation have their tanks filled and equipment taken from storage to the boat each day by the staff which means there isn’t much land based movement aside from the task of fitting into a wetsuit or lifting a rum laden beverage at happy hour. Spearfishing is usually banned to tourists or only pursued by those with a significant time in the water and this removes the risk of spears accidentally going off or the attraction of sharks to a fresh catch. Summed up the average divers only exertion is breathing and a few fin kicks from time to time underwater. This means the crew working for the tourists are the ones putting watches to the real test.
Silversides illuminated by a diver on Grand Cayman's Leslie's Curl dive site.
Looking back to this life lived underwater I often think of what would have made the ultimate all-terrain everyday watch. At that time I was diving with a Suunto dive computer and to back this up was an analogue pressure and depth gauge along with a Citizen Promaster Aqualand a gift from my mother for completing my dive training.
Same watch spec, but at that time I was not aware of NATO or bracelet options. Mine is tucked away somewhere in storage in Canada. https://www.gearpatrol.com/watches/a14271/citizen-promaster-aqualand/
Some contest that a computer is enough, however I have killed more than one computer in my time and a backup watch ensured I completed the dive safely. The Citizen watch was always on my wrist and it had a very cool computer function that like the Suunto would kick into dive mode as soon as you went underwater. The downside was that it was quartz and the battery had a hard time powering the computer. Diving ten or more times a week takes a toll on batteries and this meant that the battery power would not be sufficient enough to run the Citizen computer, but there would be enough juice to run the quartz movement for many months afterwards. Given my tight budget the last thing I wanted to do was bring the watch in for a battery replacement every 3-4 months and the Suunto was the most important for battery replacement. This meant I used the bezel timing function of the watch the most. The size of the watch and heavy rubber strap was also uncomfortable in the tropics so I had long wished for the ability to splurge on a bracelet. Despite the rubber strap having large raised grooves for air movement these were only on the upper portion of the strap and the long days in the Caribbean sun seemed relentless at times.
From the Caribbean to the South Pacific, the Red Sea to the Mediterranean travel makes way for diving and a solid GMT is the icing on the cake. Stock image of San Blas islands a beautiful archipelago off the coast of Panama that I was lucky enough to visit twice.
What does this diver think makes the ideal everyday watch?
With more than enough time to gather my thoughts on this there are plenty of attributes that are more desirable and useful to have but the most important functions in my opinion for such a watch are automatic (no batteries), a timing bezel and wearing comfort... and although I didn't think of it at the time I believe a GMT function would have helped so I knew when to call family back home.
A micro-rotor is the pinnacle of automatics and with K2's winding efficiency and power reserve an active outdoors person might never need to wind their watch. The timing bezel on Supersede is a crisp 120 click, which provides more precision over a 60 click bezel. As for wearing comfort the 39.5mm case diameter mixed with the very low profile 9.85mm case height ensure it has enough presence, but is kept out of the way when moving around. The GMT function with it's day/night indicator is incredible and takes any guess work out of whether it's night or day at your reference time.
Looking back to my nearly 10 years on and under water I never would have thought I would be on the cutting room floor of my dream watch, Supersede. It's not positioned/marketed as a dive watch, but it checks all the boxes and it's so far 100m rating is more than enough to make it an incredible allrounder.
Photo by @the_vintage_guy (instagram)
Oh, and what about Supersedes water resistance?
I have come to the conclusion that while having 200m and above water resistance in a watch is cool, in the real world 100m is more than enough. Having said that Supersede has been put to the test so I do have an inside scoop on how it performed, but you will have to wait till next time.
Do you think Supersede will reach the 200m goal? What might be the challenges?
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article or join Andi and myself this Thursday June 16th @17:00 CET for an update.
It's wonderful to have you along for the journey and it would be great to hear how many of you dive, snorkel or swim often and what your favourite watch is. Let me know in the comments.
Till next time...
Landon Stirling
I was not clear in regard to the IWC shock response.
The effect of the shock was jar the regulator out of position and it slowly returned to its original setting.
Neither silicon nor steel are much affected by any shock the wearer is likely to survive. It was the regulator that moved. The silicon spring is not more resistant by itself, but rather because it is free sprung. No regulator to get shocked out of position.
For a large rate change, the steel spring has to be bent beyond its elastic limit. Springs do accelerate do to regular action. Marine chronometers are regarded as requiring 100 years to get to full stability. I don't know about the stability of silicon.
The springs are free to move and recover from less than explosive shock just as do the spring on shock mount cap jewels. This may lead so some work hardening but it is a very small effect.
Technically these springs and Breguet's predecessor parachute are not shock absorbers. They spread the impact and reduce the force at the key parts but they do not absorb shock.
Resilience is the key to shock protection. This is how inca-bloc like devices work and they ease the work of lubricating cap jewels. long spiral spring arms on the balance also reduces shock susceptibility. the Elgin dura balance put weights on these arms to make regulation easier. It was fairly crude but Horage may be able to make a better version.
@jlweber With silicon it can be better, but not immune. A steel hairspring could bend with a shock where as silicon remains neutral as it's not malleable. This bending of the steel would effectively lengthen the spring to a degree and change it's beat rate. A benefit in using a free sprung balance wheel is that a shock should first affect the symmetry of the beat rate before having an affect on the precision of beat rate. A hard enough shock on any mechanical watch could affect the beat rate.
The regulator in my IWC was the part affected by the shock. The rate went off and them slowly returned to its regular rate.
One thing I like about the K2 is that it si freesprung and should be immune to this problem.
The IWC 3521 has an added shock reducer that fits between teh movement and the case, Its an interesting system. They adopted a product from outside horology.
Another system was used by Wyler and Elgin in the US. The Elgin balance was freesprung. The made the balance arms a long flexing spiral which reduced susceptibility to shock. Elgin sold these with a lifetime guarantee against staff breakage. It turned out to be the lifetime of Elgin but the concept might be worthwhile in the future with the availability of electron beam machining.
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful reply.
For me the issues are shock and water resistance, and now crown extension.
Shock resistance issue come from two experiences.
Once I wore my Rolex while feeding chunks of wood into a high power chipper. That resulted in a complete overhaul. Fortunately it was a long time ago when Rolex service was reasonable priced and done well.
Another was when I wore my IWC 3521 Ingenieur while using a steel rod to break up some rocks. The result was that the regulator was jarred out of position with watch running fast for a week or so before returning to its original rate.
This is kind of thing ordinary people do which results in bad outcomes. The IWC 3521 has a separate shock absorber between the movement and case which protected it but makes it more difficult to time the watch on a machine. This might be a good option for a Horage model for full everyday use.
Now I wear a quartz watch when using my power mower on my lawn or doing things where shock can come up my arm. I also recommend quartz for people who do a lot of shooting of guns.
Now I do Yoga and often put weight on my hands. Some of my watches have crowns dig into my wrist while doing these . I am beginning to like the idea of putting the crown at 3:30 or 4:00 to make it more comfortable when doing things with extreme wrist bending.
Landon, thanks for sharing. Beautiful story and pictures. Can't wait for my summer holiday now! The article's conclusion prompts me to ask this knowledgeable group about what water resistance really means. There are plenty of charts flying around with a diversity of interpretations. For some, 100m WR means you can push it to up to 100m scuba diving (ie Casio https://www.casio-intl.com/asia/en/wat/water_resistance/) Others will state you can do up to snorkeling + water activities (ie ORIS https://www.oris.ch/DATA/22948_oris_manual_en.pdf ). I am pretty sure if I look hard enough I will find charts stating that 100m only gets you gentle swimming and 200m is what is really needed for some recreational diving and watersports (w-skiing; surfing). Lastly, some will make a distinction between a diver's and a regular watch with same 200m WR rating (ie Seiko https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/customerservice/faq/general-information-8 ). All this to say, this is super confusing: recommended activities seem to be subject to interpretation by manufacturers. I grasp Supersede is not a pro-diver watch. As long as it lives up to its all-terrain motto and allows for recreational diving, water sports as well as mountain sports, golf, motorcycling and the rest of our hobbies that put watches to the test, then I don't really mind if it is 100, 150 or 200m rated.
Hey Everyone. Someone informed me that the link in the newsletter has you signup before accessing the forum post. I had a look and it is the case, but should not be formatted like this. It's quite strange as it has not happened in the past and we definitely want to ensure the article is open for everyone to read regardless of having signed up. I believe it has to do with me linking the post while editing. I will double check this in future times. Apologies for any inconvenience.
K2 calendar is big than most of other watches, even a little bigger than K1 big date.