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Diving With Watches

Published on Mon, 13 Sep 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Grab your gear, we're going diving.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host James Stacey leads a deep dive into the world of dive watches with fellow certified divers Nick Marino (Hodinkee's SVP of Content) and Cole Pennington. The conversation explores the enduring appeal of dive watches in an era where dive computers have made mechanical timing devices functionally obsolete for actual diving.

The panel shares their personal diving origins—from Nick's alligator-accompanied certification dive in Florida's Crystal River, to Cole's dual certifications (once in a Pennsylvania quarry, then falling in love with diving in Thailand's Koh Tao), to James's nerve-wracking first dive in Vancouver's murky waters. They discuss how their diving experience influences their relationship with watches, ultimately concluding that while dive computers are the practical choice, dive watches serve powerful symbolic purposes and provide confidence through their heritage and design.

The conversation tackles several key questions: Are dive watches still relevant? What happens when steel sport watches fall out of fashion? Why do brands keep producing new dive watch variations? The panelists agree that dive watches have transcended pure functionality to become "vessels for stories" and symbols of adventure, with design flexibility that ensures their longevity. They discuss memorable dive experiences paired with specific watches, from Cole's Marathon T-SAR during a dramatic water spout encounter in the Andaman Sea to James's Seiko kinetic GMT on Hawaiian wreck dives.

The episode concludes with each panelist sharing their dream dive watch choice—Nick selecting the Certina DS PH200M, Cole wanting a vintage Omega Ploprof prototype, and James coveting the Rolex Sea-Dweller 16660. They tease a future group dive trip to an undisclosed location recommended by legendary diver Brett Gilliam, leaving listeners in suspense.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacey What is it about dive watches? Once a tool for an actual sport, the sport of diving, dive watches were born to keep us alive. But now, nearly seventy years later, are dive watches anything more than reminders of a bygone era? Nostalgic totems to an adventurous pastime that we dream about from the comfort of our desk jobs, or a topside lifestyle flex for those with prolific thalassophobia? You know what, the water's warm and the viz looks good, so let's dive in and see if we can't sort it out. Hi, it's your host, James Stacey, and today we're chatting on the one of core niches in the world of watch enthusiasm, and that's dive watches. And as much as I love desk divers, I've got a panel of certified divers to chat about dive watches, diving, water resistance, and presumably a whole lot more, so to go over it with me. Please welcome my panel of esteemed co-workers. Uh co-workers a is a strong term in this one because in this case, uh Nick is the Hodinki's SVP of content and he's also very, very much my boss, so be nice in the comments. I could always use a bonus to buy more dive watches. Nick, welcome to the show. Nick Barino, how you doing? Good. Thanks for having me, James. It's a treat to have you here. It'll be fun. You know, we said that we'd we'd start casting a wider net with this and and I'm thrilled to have you on. I think this will be super fun. Uh next up he's a diver, a BMX enthusiast and a modern day nomad. It's Chili P, aka the Iceman. What's going on, Cole?
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) How are you? Doing all right, as usual. Glad to be here, chatting with y'all and and today I'm actually excited, genuinely excited about uh you know speaking with you about diving. So that's great. Usually Cole's enthusiasm is
James Stacey fake, but today's up and down. It's good. It's good. I was pumped because I thought, you know, we you know basically the idea to have uh a show just about kind of diving and and the actual dive interface with watches uh came from this you know, weekend idea we had a little while ago, which was just to resurface a bunch of dive watch stories from kind of the last you know 10, 11 years of Hodinki's work on the subject matter. And some of it was, I think, really, really interesting to look back on and see not only how how far dive watches have come in 10 years, five years, two years even in some cases, but also just to see kind of the breadth of design that exists in the realm of the dive watch. And I I thought it would be fun to kind of start there, but from a diving angle. So both of you guys are certified divers. I thought it was kind of fun to have the three of us actually be able to say like, no, I have I dive. I dive whenever I can or or I used to dive more than I do now if you're like me. And uh and yeah, I thought I thought it would be fun to start there. Uh so uh Nick, why don't you tell us about um what brought you to to diving. We'll get to watches for sure. But let's start with diving. Uh I grew up in Florida in Orlando, which is landlocked but never too far from water. So I was in the ocean all the time as a kid and when I wasn't the ocean, I was in a swimming pool. And as I became an adult and began to sort of love travel and see places outside of outside of Florida. I realized that this was something I could kind of take with me everywhere. So I got certified. I think my first dive was in the Crystal River, which is in sort of central western Florida. And I remember for sure that in my certification dive, there was an alligator in the water with us. Awesome. Which is that's gets like Florida standards, you know, a super common. It's like seeing a bird. You know, they're just they're kind of everywhere. And and watches came later. Actually, I've I've worn one my entire life. I have a 40 year old tan line on my left arm, but really getting into watches came after really getting into diving. And
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) how about you, Cole? I did it. Uh I've you know, I've always been into it. Watching documentaries when I was a kid and then finally uh you know, they offered it as a elective in college, believe it or not. Oh really? Yeah, so I took it. But I took it with a guy who was like a an extreme hard ass, former Navy diver and so forth. And yeah, I did a did the checkout dive at a little quarry up in Pennsylvania. But then and I didn't love it, believe it or not. Like, it wasn't a great, like, it was the quarry sucked, the pool sucked. I didn't have the chance to fall in love with diving. So a year later, when I graduated college, I moved to Thailand, and there's this like this island, Kotao, that's famous for it because it's cheap. It's like less than three hundred dollars to get certified. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, it's it's it's good price. So two of my buddies were doing it and I was like, Ah, the hell with it. I'll do it again with you. So I did I did my open water, basic open water twice. Okay. And that in Thailand is when I actually fell in love with diving, like and said, All right, this is gonna be a lifelong hobby. So that's how I came to
James Stacey it. Nice. Yeah. For for me I had always wanted to dive like since I was a little kid. My my mom gave me not too long ago like a like a grade one you know, it's like a hardbound paper book that you draw store, you write your own story and draw it. And it was about everybody had to do a book on what they wanted to do when they grew up and I did mine on wanting to be an oceanographer and a diver and it was just drawing like drawings of stick men in the water with sharks and and then stick sharks and and that sort of thing. But I had wanted to do it for a long time and then uh, you know, several years ago I moved from the eastern side of Canada, uh, you know, around Toronto out to Vancouver where I lived for the better part of uh eight years. And when I was out there, suddenly I was close to water again. And by chance a a cousin of mine had also always wanted to get diving, but didn't really have anyone to get into it with. So we just went went for it and uh did my first dive in maybe three or four feet of Viz at Whitecliffe Park in Vancouver. And it was uh it was scary and fun and intimidating and exciting, and and all these things that you want from life, all packed into a 35-minute experience in which the whole time I believed that I was taking what was probably going to be my last breath. I did not trust that regulator for one second of my first dive. I figured it's working now and in any moment it'll fail and that's the end. And I think it it it added some excitement and I you know it's a it's a something that I I've you know not done that much of since having a second kid. You know, a lot of time just kinda goes away. But the nice thing is is it's not a sport that goes anywhere or or nor does it really evolve that quickly. You know, it they they made the big leaps came in the fifties and the sixties. And since then we've just kind of been enjoying it and it just gets safer and kind of more fun. And you can do it in more places now, all all of which are uh are kind of good things. So if if those are your starting points for diving, what's your starting point for a dive watch? What was the first time where you remember seeing a dive watch or seeing someone dive with a watch or experiencing the idea even of just water resistance for a watch. Cole, where where did you start there? I
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) would say mm, I didn't even notice it until I got into watches. Uh didn't even think about it until I got into watches as like a uh early teen. And then all of a sudden it's everywhere. And then you know, once the thing about once you get into watches, you start to look through the lens of watches at every other hobby you have. So, like, what's the pilot in my plane wearing or so forth? So then when I would go, you know, watch the same documentaries, read the same issues in NACEO, I would always look for the watches that that were on the rest of the people. But to be honest, my dive instructor wore a little some sort of uh yeah, Garmin, Casio, one a dive computer, like like most divers. So most people will wear a dive computer, they won't wear a mechanical watch. So I would say, I wish I had a good story. Like I saw someone wearing a sub and fell in love. But the the truth is no. It's uh it's like through media that I even explored the early connection of dive watches and diving itself. That's totally true for me, for me too,
James Stacey actually. For a long time, I I when I was younger and fitter, I sort of fancied myself as a triathlete. And I have always worn, and I still wore to run one of these resin Time X. I actually looked up the reference number before and it's the T5K6849J for anybody out there who's curious. Alright hit the hit the show notes for that one folks. There's no quiz don't available at um the esteemed authorized dealer Amazon.com for 59.95. It's still what I wear when I run, when I swim, the water resistance is a hundred meters. I I've never been deeper than a hundred meters. I have no intention of going deeper than a hundred meters. Like that's plenty. And and and so and really until I started working for Hodenki, to be honest, if I were going underwater, it would be that what the same watch I'm wearing to do any other sport. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, I suppose. And and uh in my case, I I grew up uh fascinated with anything that could go underwater, especially something that was also meant to be with you when you weren't underwater. Uh and I remember as a kid, I got my first timex, which I've I've written about for the site before, and uh immediately I was just thrilled with the idea that you could take it in a pool or in the lake and it wouldn't break. It was like it was meant for it. And it felt like a a little bit of like an adventure tool, even if it wasn't a dive watch. And then as I got a bit older, um I had a uh a family relative that had uh a sea dweller that they had gotten during a a a work stint in South America in uh in the probably the late seventies, early eighties. And it was something that I just became fascinated with before I knew Rolex from anything else or a sea dweller from uh sub or or any of those sorts of details. I just loved the idea. Like he wasn't a diver. He liked it because it was kind of a tough watch that you could wear anywhere and now it would be like collector's beast the kind, of thing you would give to Christie's or Phillips or something to sell for you, uh, so you could buy a house or similar. Um, but at the time it was just the watch that he wore, and uh and I remember being really kind of infatuated with the general design. And of course now that design is almost like it's been become derivative because of how popular it is. But it is still just the kind of icon of a dive watch and it was it was neat to kind of have that as a start. It's funny that you should mention the Sea Dweller. So of course that was one of the stories we rewound this weekend is one of our favorite dive watch stories of all time. And I I would sort of even though it makes absolutely no sense irrationally, feel much more comfortable diving with a sea dweller than a a submariner. Um, there there's something in my sort of lizard brain that makes me feel like like that one I can take underwater, even though that makes that makes no sense at all. There's something like Rolex has decided that this one is so much more extreme than anything I could ever possibly need. Like now for my 20 foot dive. Like that that one is the one I'll feel comfortable with. Yeah. Now I I definitely yeah, a few dives in it's time I need that HEV. I was just gonna say that that helium escape valve is everything. Yeah, for sure. And what one of the best just not even a myth, it's not even fair to call it a myth, but the whole helium escape valve is just one of those things that it's one of those esoteric points of data that is abused by marketing, yeah, with no underlying understanding of the technology. And we we can get to that if people care. Maybe, maybe they don't, maybe it's an old story. I know that we've written about it on the site before and we can put it in the show notes. But the the helium escape valve, maybe when we get to dive watch design or something like that, is is uh it's a sore point. It's it's a weird thing because as soon as you know what it's for, it really sticks out on watches that that people buy just to wear, especially ones where it's a crown. You know, it's one thing to have the sort of flush aperture, but but in scenarios where it's crown occupied or or something like that. I think that's exactly why I would feel more comfortable with it, because I I I would wear a submariner in my civilian life. I would not wear the sea dweller in my civilian life. I would you know that feels purpose built in a way that the submariner is now so totally integrated into everyday life. You know, this the seed no one's walking around in a seed dweller unless they really know what they're doing. Well I mean that that and that's a fair point. And it leads me to one of my greater questions is you know, do you feel that your relationship with watches is affected by the fact that you're a certified diver, that it's something that's in your mind when you pick a watch or you like, it's gotta be ISO sixty four twenty five or it's gotta have a helium escape valve or it better not have a helium escape valve or or whatever, or it just doesn't really necessarily add I think for
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) me, the relationship between being a diver and the dive watches is as such where I actually don't care. So here's what it is. A lot of the gear that we buy, even even dive gear, like a specific dive knife that you use, whatever, all that stuff does not matter. It just doesn't. We can get that out of the way and we can say that the truth of the matter is you can dive with a SKX 0007 or a C Dweller, and it won't make a difference for for us. But here's the thing. I think, and I think Nick alluded to this, the even though it's imagined it's a total placebo effect. The confidence derived from having something that you know is better, quote unquote, makes diving more fun. That's all it is is the we like to use our gear, right? We buy this gear, we put research, time, effort into yeah, selecting a piece of gear. Does it make a difference most of the time? No. But it makes you feel damn good using it. No, th over the weekend I bought a Jap
James Stacey anese pairing knife. Sure. I can cut tomatoes with it with something else. You know, I I I bought it because there's a pleasure in a well-built object. Um and I look forward to that tomato when I have that Japanese pairing. You know, that to me a dive watch is exactly the same. Yeah. I mean, it's always been for me where you you get that feel it is that thing where you take something that has one context, but then it has this extra context where you you can wear an SKX, a C dweller, whatever. You can wear a dive watch all the time. That's the idea, literally, is that you would have a watch that you could then also take when you went diving. And the the funny thing is, is you know, and and Cole kind of highlighted it, you know, dive computers are a thing're. rec Theyommended by Patty and they're they're absolutely what people not only should be diving with, but are diving with. It's an effective thing. They're not that expensive anymore. And they track all sorts of things that you just simply can't track with a watch. You can do some of it with a watch and the right strap, you can do some of it with the right watch and the right bezel and other things, but the your standard format of a dive watch is really a timing watch, a very mechanically simple timing device that allows you to kind of passively, but at a very high legibility, know how long you've been doing something. But it doesn't offer you depth accuracy. It doesn't offer you any sort of understanding of what the various gases you're breathing are doing to your body and what will happen to those gases if you decide to ascend. In your mind, the easy question, or not the easy, the simply put question, is like, are are dive watches even important anymore? Or are they just kind of trinkets for for people to collect and and enjoy kind of ancillary to the world of diving? Aaron Powell For me, their main virtue is symbolic. And I think symbols are really powerful. You know, I I like it as part of a a uniform. You know, you don't need a BDU jacket to fight in the army either. You know, that that's it's a symbol. I mean, you can use it if you wanna use those pockets or, you know, an M sixty five jacket has those pockets. Sure. I mean there's utility in them. But you know, you could you could go in the army in a in a T shirt and a pair of lacrosse shorts. So not, you know, functionally it's not going to make all that much difference. But but there's great symbolic value in feeling like you're part of a continuum and that this is this is one of the ways that you respect diving itself. I think they're important for those reasons. And I think that that design language has come fully on land and become something that has its own virtue strictly aesthetically. So they're relevant for all those reasons, not because of their functionality. They've long been surpassed. And I would say also, if I may, like the reason that I wear that $60 Timex when I run, as opposed to some kind of smart device, is I don't necessarily want all of that other information about my heart rate and miles elapsed. There is something wonderful about slipping into the void as a runner where you just kind of go and you know your time. And I I I feel the same way about a dive watch. I mean, fine, let the let the instructor wear the dive computer and tell me when it's time to go up. Like you you handle that. For sure. Oh wow Yeah, the running thing is interesting because I I used to run a ton when I lived in Vancouver. I had a route that I loved and and I went through every phase. I I started with a normal chronograph watch, then I needed something with GPS I. w Tenthen with something that had, you know, GPS and stride measurement and and, you know, recovery metrics and and the whole kind of Garmin suite. And then after a while I went back to just using a like a brightling aerospace with a chronograph on it. Cause all I wanted to know was I'll run a half hour in one direction and then turn around and run a half hour back. And the metrics don't change that much. I've been doing this for too long. There's not like a a big thing to measure or to understand. And I and I guess at some point there's probably people out there, you know, it it kind of scares me a little bit, but there are probably people out there who have dove for so long and so frequently that they don't need this data, especially if it's a dive they've done so many times. Like I I don't, you know, set GPS waypoints on a hike I've done thirty times. I'm not gonna get lost. And maybe it's kind of the same thing in in that world. Uh Cole, what what what what's the relevance of a dive watch today for you?
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) It's a tough question. I uh yes, it's symbolic and so forth. I've never so I've talked to a few commercial divers on Instagram. I know through the dive community in Thailand. There's a lot of like uh tech divers who work in the Endeman Sea on oil rigs and so forth that once you are ingratiated into this crew, you're you know, you just have beers with them on Friday night. And in those conversations, it always comes back to I use my dive computer, I don't dive with a dive watch. I do. I actually do dive with a dive watch and I'd rather ditch the computer simply because I'm not doing divingness that challenging. Really aggress
James Stacey ive uh profiles? Yeah. Not really. Hundred and eighty foot bounce dives and nah. Big big wall jumps.
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) Yeah, last one was maybe Hawaii, I think, potentially. Or oh yeah, yeah, I think Hawaii. But all the all the diving that I've done recently is all pretty, you know, it's challenging, but not really. And I think dive watches as it as they are are completely irrelevant for diving, but they serve another purpose, which is that uh how do I put this in in a non-trite way? You know, like it's a podcast. You're supposed to be trite. They're vessels for stories. I think the the fact that we have such a large culture and following and you and I, all three of us, can sit around and write day after day about the same thing and never run out of things to say, really, speaks to the fact that yes, there's a place for them. They're incredibly important. But I don't think the right question to ask is: is a dive watch relevant or not anymore? Obviously, it is relevant to a certain part of us, anyone who's infatuated with mechanical objects or has a certain, you know, fascination for things like timekeeping and adventure and so forth. In the water, the answer's obvious. Of course a dive computer is going to be a million times more effective. But the direct comparison is almost irrelevant because we can have just as good and as interesting of a conversation about both sides of the equation. Like what do you actually tak,e diving? And then why do you find a dive watch romantic and interesting and so forth? If you're out there diving with a dive watch, that's cool. That's get in touch. We'll write a story. Like if you
James Stacey only use that, right? The thing that comes to my mind, and I've been thinking about this a lot, and and I think I think there's an interesting question here. Is Cole, at least for you and I, Nick, you're a little bit newer to the stepping into the fast moving stream of watch enthusiasm. But for Cole and I, like we kind of came up with the rise of steel sports watches, which the the core, don't get me wrong, the explorer, the field watches, the the pilots watches, those are all included in there. But the real like incredible fascination around steel sports watches in the last decade is dive watches. Largely. Let's call it seventy-five percent of it. Right. And that that's from the SKX all the way up to million dollar, you know, Rolex is sold at auction. And the the thing that strikes me is what happens when those watches aren't stylish. Because 15 years ago, 20 years ago, you could buy a sea dweller. I remember, because I I've seen it, you could buy a sea dweller for next to nothing compared to what they cost now, right? They just weren't popular watches at the time. Tastes change, things move in and out. You're not, you know, none of us own a piece of clothing from 15 years ago that we probably really, really love, unless it came from before 15 years ago. Right? And it and it things are cyclical and and they shift and all that. But w what happens to dive watches when the popular mind share of watch enthusiasm moves on to something that isn't steal sport watches that were born in the mid-century. I I personally think they get even cooler at that point. You know, you got you guys both know this. Some of the listeners may not, but before I worked at Hodenki, I worked at Levi's. And in the 70s, Levi's had an orange tab on the back. And now, of course, they have the red tab. And if you are a denim fan and you see somebody wearing a pair of orange tab Levi's, there's just sort of a little nod of recognition. Like this person has has made the effort to seek something out that's old and cool. They didn't have to do that. And I think a dive watch to me is speaking of symbolism, takes on that exact same resonance. It when when inevitably the trend moves on to something else, I mean that's when I start getting excited about dive watches, because that that that makes them a little bit more of a cult object. And and pricing might do something that means more of us could own some of the cool cool ones. Ex
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) actly. Yeah. Like that's fine. Move on right away so that we can buy the watches we like again, you know? Cole's ready for the dress watch revival to start tomorrow. I am because I'm not interested in dress watches. I think it's already here. I think
James Stacey it started for sure. Yeah, it's here. Topic for another show. But uh but Cole, I you know, you and I enjoy an automotive metaphor or simile as much as possibly anyone possibly can. In this world, you know, the thing that strikes me is the rise of sort of overland stuff say about four or five years ago to now, and it's it's continuing. It's still becoming popular to the extent where it's not only Jeeps and tacos and defenders. Now we have overland 9-11s and Sprinter vans. And at a certain point, let's face it, this is going to be like the pro touring thing, uh, six or seven years ago where you'll be able to go to Meekham's or to Barrett Jackson and buy somebody's like 95% finished overland build yeah for pennies on the dollar. Hopefully just to save their marriage or whatever's going on in the rest of their life, right? Which is how a lot of those pro touring builds went. And the and I think the the trends shift very quickly in automotive and they shift very slowly in watches. But I I do think it's interesting to think that like at a certain point you kind of have to attempt to disconnect dive watches from the hype surrounding steel sport watches right now. And that's difficult because of the vintage inspired trend really has made them so heavily linked? I would say there is
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) an area, and I said this before and I don't know if I'm right or not, but during our come up, you remember the watch you seek days of dive watched micro brands. Oh, absolutely. That was the golden era. So even now, all the fricker stuff and so forth, that's still out there and it's still cheap. Like the the subs and of the universe are stealing the show, sure, but you can still find cool good dive watches, Ocean Seven, Krem K, Korsbeck, all those things from the early 2000s. You can still find absolutely yeah, PRS. Yeah, exactly. Like they're still around and they're you can buy them for for a good price. So the ship hasn't totally sailed, I would say. And but maybe once we move on from the sub-esque stuff, the freaker stuff might rise up. That could be the case too. I I don't know if the the thesis that we will ever move away from dive watches, like I don't know if we'll ever move away from dive watches being cool simply because there aren't that many alternatives, you know
James Stacey ? Yeah. And and I I mean I think it's worth at least saying that of all the watches in the world that are kind of if you look at all of them, it and this could just be a bias. And I'm more than welcome to say that I have a bias. I'm hosting a show about dive watches today. I'd like everyone to know this is your show, James. It's my show. Um but what I was thinking is just is the longevity of the dive watch almost have nothing to do with Yes. Is it just the out the outright flexibility of something that was designed really well, made to be simple and unobtrusive and last a really long time? Is that what we're talking about with dive watches? At which point we're just talking about like raw cool. You know? That's definitely it for me. And and you know, I think I would suspect a lot of sort of amateur divers out there like ourselves probably dive as an excuse to use or wear or buy a watch. You know, that's great. That's whatever makes it more fun. Yeah, or cameras or flashlights or knives or gear or exposure suits or boats or Japanese pairing knives. Yeah. Hey, it it'll cut through a net, you know. Of all the gear I've ever bought, no money was more poorly spent than on my dive knife. What what do you have? It's uh scuba pro something or other. Pricey. But just a l yeah. Well it was one of the I think it came came with the rags or there was a deal with the regs, that sort of thing. But um how many times have you used it, James? I think I've literally like take you mean like underwater removed it from its clip? Never. Never. Not one time. I mean, especially in a dry suit that I don't want to cut with my with my knife. I just stay away from anything that looks even remotely sharp, be it animal, be it an old rusty boat, or be it my knife or anyone else's knife. That's a good rule of thumb under what they look really cool, strapped to your leg. They really like you're about to about to do that like a thunderball fight under uh under a yacht or something, but less useful. I was gonna say in spe
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) ar fishing, it's definitely useful. Like I use it quite a bit for that
James Stacey . There's one use, but I agree. Otherwise it's just it it does look cool. So that's very high on my list of post-pandemic things to do is to take a spear fishing lesson from you, Cole. I'm very excited for that. I've been working uh working bit by bits at my cottage to improve my breath holds and uh and some depth work and that sort of thing. But uh I always wanted to enter, uh speaking of Florida, the um lionfish derbies that they have down there. Mm-hmm. Pensacola. That always seemed to me like well, first of all, a great story. I also always wanted to write about it. But for anyone that doesn't doesn't know the the brief backstory is that the lionfish is a tropical saltwater fish from Asia. It has a popular aquarium fish that has basically become dumped into the ocean and now in an invasive species all along the Florida coast and is decimating the natural habitat. And so that Florida in a very Florida Way has decided that the way to deal with this problem is to um hold annual contests to see who can kill the most in the shortest amount of time. Anyway, a good excuse for a dive. Yeah, I mean I think I think we should field a team to be clear. I agree. Uh you know, the the hodinkey's uh spear fishing team will take it we'll take all the lion fish we can find. It happens in May. Like this May. Let's do it. Well yeah, let's see, let's see if we I don't think I'm gonna get up to speed at that speed, but uh we got we got some practicing to do anyway. So see what I can spear fish in uh Chili Lake, Ontario. I it's my understanding the the lionfish is both good eating and in many places can be traded for free beer if you're willing to uh to bring them in depending on what part of the world you're in. I think for some of these line first derbies the prize for winning is an actual is like a cooler four-year beer. That's the that's the which is also very Florida. That's a good deal. Putting you guys a little bit on the spot because I didn't really put this in the show notes, but I'm wondering if you guys have a mem a really great memory of an awesome dive that also included like the right dive watch, not just your dive watch or maybe your favorite or just one where it was right. If if you you can't think of one immediately, I've got one in in the in my pocket here. I I have one
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) actually that I don't think I've ever written about or anything like that. Let's hear. I I wrote about one watch the the Nautic fish Adventure Diver. That was kind of my first dive watch. But my second or third was the Marathon T-Star, which I know y'all know. And in 2011-ish, I went, I did a live aboard dive trip in the Similant Islands, which are out in the Andaman Sea. And this marathon, I put it on a bright orange NATO because I thought it was very cool, you know and a memorable dive so I don't have the watch anymore so like that says maybe it wasn't that memorable but looking back I'm very fond of it because of this one memory we jumped in gorgeous day, like stunning day, near Sail Rock, I think it was called. Saw, you know, whale sharks, manorays, the beautiful megafauna that you'll find in the Engman. Then we surfaced. But the weird thing is, on your safety stop, like it was very dark. Like you know, usually you can kind of use light and sun to just orient you in general. Just super, super dark. It was like all right, interesting. Surface. And then we surfaced to two water spouts closing in on the boat. Like literally, like closing in on the boat. And and we just kinda were sitting there waiting for the boat to come motor around and pick us up and my buddy took uh snapped a picture of these two water spouts touching down like not too far. And for some weird reason it was just very like as we were sitting there knowing that like the water spouts are closing in, we're far enough away that it's fine. We have some time. And it was just one of those uh I think the word is gob smacked and not god smacked. Gob smacked, correct. Yeah, gobsmacked. God smack was a terrible band about twenty years ago. Yeah, alienating listeners now. That's right, got smack. Um but yeah, one of those gobsmack moments where you're you're floating there in the middle of the endemancy, you see these water spouts and just kinda like that memory's tied to that watch. So I wish I I
James Stacey Yeah. I mean there's so many so many of those uh great ones have kind of come and gone, you know. I remember sever several years ago I was in Hawaii for a vacation and I had taken a handful of watches just to write about. And one of them was the um it's a Seiko SUN 023. It's a GMT diver kinetic one, has local jumping. It's a little on the big side, it's like 46 millimeters, but it's one of their shrouded cases. So it doesn't wear as big as you would expect. I actually really, really love this watch for a like sub thousand dollar really good travel GMT that's also a full-on dive watch. And I remember I took it on several dives with um an outfit out of Wai Manalo Bay. And um one of the dives was the first one we went on. It was one of the first times. I'm trying to remember it would be give or take, one of the first times I also like did a real dive like for with an objective in tropical water. I had probably done my first 30, 40 plus dives in cold Vancouver water. And uh so we went to a spot called LCU and, hopefully those of you listening from Hawaii know the spot I mean, the landing craft utility wreck. And it's uh it's uh so you remember like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, those little boats the guys are in. But behind those boats, there's bigger ones that hold tanks and jeeps and stuff like that. And after the war, they wanted to sink one to make an artificial reef. And due to the complexities of sinking a giant thing that was meant to float, it flipped upside down and landed kind of um with the open side facing the sand and it made essentially a a a low lying cave on what is otherwise like a barren stretch of sand. So you can see this weird obelisk in the water from the back of the dive boat, about 90 feet below you. And you actually we were it's a it was a drift dive, so we started up current and it was a negative entry, so no air in the BC, and you just kind of rip down and as you're coming up on it, it's covered in barracuda, huge sea turtles. You get down low enough so that the it's blocking the current and you can kind of rest for a second and you can go inside and it's full of black tip reef sharks. It was just one of the most incredible dives and I had I didn't have to wear much in the way of an exposure suit. I was just wearing I think a three mil wetsuit. And so I had this Seiko on and it just looked perfect. If I took a a shot, you know, on the boat, a wrist shot on the boat, it has blues and oranges and a black case and it just kind of looked both like intentional in terms of the the dive watch chops, but also like a very vacation-y sort of watch. And that's one that will always always kind of stand out in my mind. It was an amazing dive due to the current we were able to do three locations. So we had six or seven minutes at depth at the LCU and then go up to about 50 feet, get back into the fastest point of the current and go down on another wreck. And then we ended on this much more recent catamaran uh wreck. It was a great dive. I highly recommend it to anyone. But that's one that always just kind of stands out for it's a really good watch that's not a fortune, that works really well as a supplement to a dive computer, but also as long as you've got a beefy enough wrist, which I probably don't, it also makes a pretty great like day-to-day or travel watch. The the other thing that I struggle with with dive watches, because this is my, you know, kind of my linchpin to the watch industry, especially like sub one thousand dollar, sub two thousand dollar product, is at a certain point, do you ever get the feeling that dive watches are kind of like the inflection point of boredom for the watch industry? Like if they don't have something else to do, they just put out another dive watch. Whether it's another dial color or or a different size, or maybe now it's with a bracelet or it used to be now it's with a rubber strap. Like yeah, I like like I think that's as easily as I can say it. Like it it often seems like the boredom play. Yeah. Well there's there's also an a sort of a trend of ocean inspired on any number of levels. There's so much inspiration out there right now with this with the ocean. Yeah, I think it's you know, it's a box to check in some ways for a a portfolio. Um a brand wanting to make sure that they they have one of those that that's no different to me than you know a a fashion brand wanting to make sure they also have a trench coat yeah or whatever. But you know, when you have a brand like Zodiac or Sartina or something that has real bona fides, you know, it's sort of like Burberry makes a trench coat for real. You know, these brands make dive watches for real. And so every now and then you might kind of roll your eyes when someone just rolls one out without s seeming to have that level of intention. Yeah and I think the the other side of it is like you you've got to give Rolex credit for largely sticking to a format. So instead of having five or six dive watches, they just have the two. And I think a lot of other brands just kind of keep trying to make something that will be their submariner. And when it's not immediately a hit, which is a very unfair expectation for them to put on themselves, but when it's not immediately the most popular dive watch that everyone knows, they they start throwing other pieces of spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that they get the right one. Yeah, sometimes you really have to do have to let something ride for a while and be willing to let that be your product. And to me, one of the one of the many lessons of the Samariner was the discipline to keep that as the as the flagship dive watch and and not do a submariner too. I mean the seedweller is kind of its own thing, like I genuinely think of that as a tool, but oh yeah, that discipline has really paid off uh by making it feel singular. Even though it's surrounded, it's hard, it's not singular at all. It's surrounded by competitors and imitators, but it still feels singular because Rolex bet on it and has just continued to double down on that bet. There
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) there is some interesting point that that I'd like to make here that one thing that has spurred some interesting design changes that have proven that brands cannot be lazy are the new ISO or ISO certifications. That has changed the way we do some things. And there's one more thing that I think too. We need to bring back the era of the skin diver. We don't need, so brands are kind of forced into following these certifications, what if they just don't care? I say we're we're we're X, Y, and Z. We don't care about your certifications. And we're gonna design a watch that is inexpensive and designed for an active lifestyle that might include water too. It's like kind of what Nico's saying. It's an ocean-inspired watch, but nowadays the ocean-inspired watch is usually in a fashion direction, not a function direction, where I think there is a space. Doxa kind of did it with the that sub one thousand dollar you know the watch, James, the sub two hundred. Yeah, yeah, the sub two hundred. Like that is as close as we can kind of get. And then some Seiko's, but Seiko is playing the dive watch game. What if we have a kind of a resurgence of this class of watches that works for an active lifestyle but doesn't cost two grand because they need to do X, Y, and Z. You know, I I this is a space I'd like to explore. Yeah, I would
James Stacey say largely the torch of the skin diver the sixties and early seventies skin diver was picked up by the micro brands. Yeah. And that they were offering something kind of high value and different from the standard. Arguably now a lot of the microbrand things is to follow the standard because even micro brands have become somewhat standardized. So true. Right. But I do think it's interesting, because that's that's largely what pulled me to the SPB 143, was that it was very much a skin diver format. Had that H-style case. I have a you know I have a late 60s Sylvanna skin diver that I still wear and really like, and I like the kind of humble, almost Lego-esque nature of they were all buying cases from the same two or three suppliers. They were maybe making their own dials, but everybody was sharing these hands or those hands and this crystal and that bezel. And you kind of had a a lot of options, but having those options didn't take anything out of the market in terms of interest. And it it made it so
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) because of the economies of scale at work and the OEM manufacturing, the savings can be passed along to the consumer. That's what I think is interesting. SCURFA is a great example of sort of a modern oh man.
James Stacey And Paul, talk about a uh you know, a a guy with real diving chops, Paul Scofield. He's just a a lovely guy. He makes a great product. The watch is killer, he's awesome. Uh, you know, it I love that a a commercial diver, you know, saturation diver that was once a huge Rolex head runs a brand that's so clearly informed by somebody with thousands of hours of underwater experience. Yeah, no, they make a great product for sure. Exactly. And and that that leads me, I think where where we could probably end is uh if you're going diving tomorrow, what what watch would you like on your wrist and and I'll give you a wild card. Would you like to make your own rather than buy one from the the you know nearly sixty seven, sixty eight year history of dive watches? I I have absolutely no ambitions to to make my own dive watching. Nick, you don't want to go into an even harder part of the watch world. This is the one I'm in is hard enough. But the one that I want to wear is the one that Cole wrote about diving in the desert. If anyone hasn't read that piece, the headline is Sand, Sea, and Certina Diving in the Utah Desert. Such a good watch, too. Good pick. So it's the DS PH 200 meter. It's just awesome. It's it's less than a thousand bucks. I'd wear it on the daily. It looks both old and new. It's got these cool kite-shaped hands, blue dial, blue and gold kind of bezel on a NATO. I kinda wish I had one on right now right now. We can make that happen, Nick. I have you to thank Icem
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) an for getting me under that watch. What would you what would you take? I uh so to answer the first question, would I want to take my own watch or make my own? I I explored that in the mid-2000 like 2014-2016, I did try and do it. It was called Precipice. And I have you know in a folder on my computer all the art, all the renderings. Is that like like you're on the edge of greatness? Honestly, pretty far from greatness. That's the that's the
James Stacey well It's harder than it looks, right? It's easy it's easy to be us and like be a little bit critical about watches or or s kind of see everything and think that you have an understanding. And then you put pen to paper and you're like, all I'm doing is copying the ten things that already that already exist that I like
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) An amalgamation of oh what do I think? And and you realize like I cannot add anything new to the conversation, so why am I in it? My my time's better spent uh informing people about what's what's out there already. So I guess I would say I would go I'd love something historic to dive with, maybe one of the early 50 Fathom examples or ah, you know what? To be honest, one of the prototype Ploprofs. That's one of my favorite dive watches, as everyone is. What a watch. Yeah. So I would go prototype ploprof or something that we don't even know about that Omega has in development that's interesting or whatever. We'll see, you know.
James Stacey You just look look into their future and be like, well, take this one today. Yeah, they've always got a lot of a lot of neat stuff. I mean, uh, for me, I if it's a dream, a 16660 sea dweller has been on the list for the better part of a decade. And I remember a decade ago when they were like four grand. Yeah. And I was like, I don't have four grand to spend on a watch. And now they're like fifteen to thirty, depending on what the package is. And I'm like, well, I guess I'm just never just not gonna be a 16660 guy. But that's a watch that I genuinely love. I love the C Dweller backstory. I love the fact that it's like it's a tougher thing, but it's not that much bigger. You know, it's it's not any wider, for example. It's a little bit thicker. I think they they I love the idea of a Rolex without the Cyclops that just stands out for me. It's a fun little like insider reflex that I I would just enjoy every time I looked at the watch. But other than that, I mean, yeah, the the the easy one is that SPB143. You know, I've had I haven't dove with it yet. I haven't dove since I've owned it, uh, but I've had it in the water a ton. And it's just, it is that like prototypical, simple, easy to read, no fuss, where it wherever you go in the world, sort of watch that also would come underwater and and be a great backup to a dive computer. So I think those are those are probably that gives you two options, one very low four figure, one, you know, more into the five range, but that's how it goes with these things. The three of us have been talking about as as soon as we're able to travel together going on a dive trip, uh but we've never figured out where we're gonna go. Uh maybe this is something that that the readers and commenters can help with. But where where should we go when we're finally able to to freely travel? I'd love. I mean, the keys would be strong for me. I've been down there once and did some snorkeling and didn't dive and I know Cole knows the area. And uh uh Nick, you may as well being a Florida boy. I'm not sure how much time you spent uh that far south. So that might be a good option. You guys are more than welcome up here. We can hit Tobermore if you want, if you want to do some chilly but clear water. No sharks up here or alligators or otherwise, just uh some some fish that will leave you alone. C
Cole Pennington (Chili P/Iceman) ole, where do you figure? So remember the the man with the golden sub, Brett Gilliam, the diving story. Yeah, yeah. So he and I we we chatted well beyond anything watch related and just about, you know, ocean life. I don't know if I should say it, but there is one place in the world that Breck Iliams said you must go and I will have to tell you guys offline. I don't wanna I don't Oh wow a big bury. Wow people are not gonna be thrilled about this call
James Stacey but it's the truth. It's somet Well folks, there it is. You know, I thought it was my show, but it's clearly Cole's show. And maybe that's what maybe that's what Hodenkee Radio is now. It's somebody else's show each week. This week it's Cole's. You just witnessed a coup d'etat on Hodenki Radio right there. Uh Canadian politeness. And there goes my show. But yeah, Cole, uh Nick, it was an absolute treat to have you both on. Thanks for coming on and chatting about uh dive watches and uh and everything else. To anyone listening, if you're enjoying the show, leave us a review, tell a friend, that's about all we can ask for. And if you have any questions, any comments, feedback, whatever, I think you can find out where to put them, probably just below where you'd find the episode on uh on hodinky.com. So thanks so much for listening and uh we'll chat to you in a week. Thanks, fellas. Thanks, James. See ya