Best Watch For Professional Mariners

Indeed she does, Sir. I am beyond blessed.

Iā€™ve been ogling the GMT version of this watch for some time. Nice watch.

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Johnā€™s complaint was having to push a button to see it in the dark soā€¦

I donā€™t agree with him about that but that was his reasoning about not wanting digital.

This is the one I use. I like the analog and the full back light combination. Only thing that would make it better is a perpetual date.

Iā€™m planning to buy this when I get home this time. Solar powered, large digital numbers, an uncluttered display, and keeps exact time via the atomic clock.

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Iā€™ve never seen a radio-controlled watch, but I have several inexpensive radio-controlled clocks; and Iā€™ve been displeased to notice that although they keep within one second of correct when they can get a correction every 24 hours, when they have to rely on their own resources their timekeeping is pretty crummy. I havenā€™t checked to see whether they can maintain within 30 seconds in 30 days. I would hope that Casio would trim their watches carefully even though they are radio corrected.

Generally speaking, a 32,768 hertz watch, the common low-end sort, if trimmed correctly can maintain +/- 15 seconds per month over a specified range of temperatures. The more expensive four megahertz movements are good for +/- five seconds per month. Higher accuracy than that gets expensive in a hurry, I think.

Supposedly the newer multi frequency atomic time keepers are rather decent. The watch keeps +/- 15 seconds per month by itself.

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The G-shock Iā€™m looking at automatically turns the light on when you move your watch to view it.

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I remember from Bowditch that the best mechanical chonometers were not measured by the amount of time they lost or gained but by the predictability of the loss or gain. A clock that lost exactly 60 seconds every day was considered way more accurate than a clock that lost 15 seconds one week and gained 6 seconds the next.

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Thatā€™s what I just said. Even my super cheap super beater DW6900 does it, so the button doesnā€™t even matter.

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Yes you did, I didnā€™t notice that part. Iā€™ve never heard of that feature before so Iā€™m excited to try it out.

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While thatā€™s true I donā€™t need celestial level chronometer accuracy in my wrist watch. I set it weekly to the DGPS time and itā€™s far more accurate than anyone needs.

In my experience, decent quality digital watches ($30 Timex Ironman) have a constant and predictable error.

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Well, you donā€™t right now but Ibelieve your opinion may change after the zombie apocalypse! :wink:

Iā€™ve had a G-Shock GR-8900A for a while that I wear when Iā€™m at work. Pretty indestructible, keeps ok enough time, has a good backlight on it, and cheap enough to beat the hell out of and replace if needed.

While at homeā€¦Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600ā€¦I absolutely love this watch.
download

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At the end of a voyage the old skippers would carry the boxed chronometers ashore to get the rates checked and if necessary adjusted. If you want a crystal-controlled timepiece to have a constant rate, keeping the frequency-setting components at a constant temperature will help considerably. Wristwatches worn on the wrist run closer to wrist temperature than room ambient. You could put an insulating cuff over the watch in temperature extremes to help even more.

Larger devices might keep the crystal in an oven of some sort, that kept the crystal at a constant elevated temperature.

The mechanism in such timepieces is comparatively crude and has no effect on timekeeping so long as the clock motor has enough power to move the gears. Timekeeping is done by counting cycles of the crystal circuit, and zapping the motor to rotate half a turn each time a secondā€™s worth of cycles have accumulated. 32,768 is a power of two, so binary dividing circuits can work conveniently with it. A four MHz setup would I presume run at 4,194,304 Hz for the same reason.

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Is this a wrist watch? If so, whatā€™s the name?

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I went to look at it and spent frustrating minutes locked in tee shirt hell with no way to go anywhere else.

Turns out the initial time wasting splash screen that I paid little attention to as I pressed the big obvious button to shop was the only place from which to get to different sections of the catalog (unless I missed something staring me in the face) ā€“ and only the shirt section is visible without scrolling down. Iā€™d suggest adding some ways to move laterally, or at the very least a ā€œCatalog Homeā€ button in plain sight on every page.

No its a shipā€™s chronometer.

Yes, you missed the hamburger which slides open the navigation menu.

John,
I wish Wenger would reintroduce their Aquagraph tide watch which had you guessed it a tide hand that was great for a quick glance to see the state of the tide. I asked them a few times and they said no but perhaps you maight have more sway with them.I had one until i chipped the glass and it was a great watch.I have still to find another analogue watch with a tide hand.

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