Water sports
Omega has been timing sporting events for many years and they have many athletes as ambassadors, including Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold medal winning swimmer, and all of their sporting models are designed to be worn in the water and can withstand the pressures of swimming, diving and turning. A water sports watch should ideally have at least 100 metre water-resistance, but if it is meant to be a true swimming watch, it should be at least water-resistant to 200 metres, because of the forces exerted upon it when the wearer is doing a stroke or diving. This year's Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean is water-resistant to 600 metres and is a COSC certified chronometre.
Sailing is an area perfectly suited to watches because of the countdowns before the start of the races. Timing at the start is crucial to a good race and if the man at the helm has a yachting countdown timer on his wrist, he's better able to hit the starting line at the exact moment the gun goes off. Companies like Citizen, Suunto, TNG, Breitling, Audemars Piguet (Polaris Chrono-graph), Omega, Hamilton and Rolex have yachting specific watches that serve this market and look good on the wrist, featuring countdown timers, tide information and other useful functions.
Corum introduced the Admiral's Cup Competi-tion 48 at BaselWorld this year. A serious yachting watch, it is water-resistant to 300 metres and comes in a corrosion-free titanium case. Though not a watch with any specific yachting functions, it is nautically themed and has the guts to go on and off a boat.
Hamilton introduced its Regatta Alarm this year, which counts down from ten, seven and five minutes. Panerai uses its Flyback Regatta as a prize in the Classic Yacht Races that it sponsors around the globe. Well suited for timing yacht races, it can be reset with one push when the different timing guns go off.




ADMIRAL'S CUP COMPETITION 48 by Corum, KAKI REGATTA ALARM by Hamilton and SEA HAWK PRO TOURBILLON by Girard-Perregaux


Diving
Diving watches have gone from utilitarian to extraordinarily popular. Their popularity is as much for the look as for the functions they perform. It has lately become fashionable to offer amazing water-resistance that no one could possibly use, but it sure is nice to have. After all, if it's water-resistant to 2,000 metres, it must be okay to go into the pool with.
Actually, it's quite a feat of engineering to make a watch that is water-resistant to 2,000 metres, like the Girard-Perregaux Sea Hawk Pro Tourbil-lon. An amazingly complicated watch, one that you wouldn't think would be suitable for diving, it is in fact quite a competent watch for under the seas. The case was very difficult to design and manufacture and it is truly designed to be a fully functional diving watch. Girard-Perregaux also introduced a Sea Hawk Pro Flying Tourbil-lon, water-resistant to 1,000 metres.
Some of the best diving watches come from brands like Bell & Ross, Citizen, Panerai,Tutima, Seiko, Suunto, Luminox, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Corum, Doxa and more.


TO BE CONTINUED...
In the forthcoming days, the rest of this lenghty survey will be added to our europastar website.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Source: Europa Star June-July 2006 Magazine Issue