Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa Dive Watch Gets a 3-Hour Makeover

Nevertheless, the legendary rotating bezel in its traditional format allows for just up to an hour’s timing at depth. Today’s technical divers can commit far longer than that underwater thanks to closed circuit rebreather technological know-how, the advanced SCUBA structure that recycles breathing gases alternatively of dispersing them. For divers who insist on the well worth of owning an analog backup should the electronic technological know-how fail (as all who rely on technology know also nicely it can), one particular-hour timing doesn’t slash the mustard.

The Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa, named just after the Gombessa sealife monitoring undertaking whose chief, groundbreaking diver, and photographer Laurent Ballesta has been involved in the watch’s enhancement, extends that analog limit to a few hrs. The look at functions an added hour hand, which could be compared to a GMT hand on a journey enjoy: When a GMT hand rotates about 24 several hours to offer a 2nd time zone looking at, the hand on the Tech Gombessa would make a a few-hour rotation towards bezel markings divided into three 1-hour sections. 

An crucial take note is that this is not a stopwatch. (Due to acquiring multiple points exactly where drinking water ingress can manifest, stopwatches typically do not like getting submerged at depth). The excess hour hand alone simply cannot be set: It is in continuous rotation, and dive timing is created by aligning the bezel with anywhere the hand occurs to be at the start of the dive.

As a complex alternative (which Blancpain has, of training course, patented), it’s expedient nearly to the issue of getting lo-fi, as opposed at minimum to the conspicuous more than-engineering involved with rival watches. So too is the 300-meter depth rating, which, although sufficient for complex diving, is in truth modest within just the style of professional-spec luxurious dive watches.

The rate, on the other hand ($28,000 or £24,700), is nearly anything but, as is the watch’s visible impact. A hulking 47 mm in diameter, the Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa is stored lightweight thanks to its Grade 23 titanium case, which functions a significantly streamlined design to combine the strap by using a single, central lug arrangement. The indexes on the dial are minimize from blocks of luminous materials, which stands out all the extra from a dial of “absolute black,” a material whose framework absorbs 97 per cent of gentle, though the bezel inlay is shaped from black ceramic. 

The view, which also capabilities a helium escape valve (a aspect for saturation dive watches created by Rolex for releasing gas trapped within just the look at) at 10 o’clock on the scenario, is driven by a model new Blancpain movement, Calibre 13P8, which offers an admirable five-day ability reserve.

Even if the Tech motif highlighted on the dial—in a somewhat jarring ’80s font—may be anything of a misnomer, the real innovation of Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa could be coming up with a new features that has real serious-earth application, having said that specialized niche that could be.