Watchlords

New release from the original microbrand.

https://www.bernhardtwatch.com/products/starboard

At a first, cursory glance, I took it to be a moon phase of some sort and thought ok that is one I could wear.

Alas. Chagrined to find it was a day/night complication, something I had never encountered.

Still nice but left me wondering who is the target market for this function?

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 8:11am

Still nice but left me wondering who is the target market for this function?

Submariners ?

MAX wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 11:45am

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 8:11am

Still nice but left me wondering who is the target market for this function?

Submariners ?

Only problem there is once submerged the boat is run on GMT time.

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 8:11am

At a first, cursory glance, I took it to be a moon phase of some sort and thought ok that is one I could wear.

Alas. Chagrined to find it was a day/night complication, something I had never encountered.

Still nice but left me wondering who is the target market for this function?

Spelunkers - it's pretty niche for ol' Bernie. I would quite like this watch with moon phase. Also, a power reserve indicator!

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 12:08pm

MAX wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 11:45am

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 26th 2024, 8:11am

Still nice but left me wondering who is the target market for this function?

Submariners ?

Only problem there is once submerged the boat is run on GMT time.

OK then, Spelunkers or Miners. Is it day or night, how long have we been in here?

EDIT: Ooops, I see Jason said spelunkers already

This did get me looking around for moon phases. A lot to be said for quartz/eco drive with this complication.

Citizen does make a lot of moon phases but most are large and/or busy.

Still wondering about what is the utility of a day/night indication and how accurate it is with seasonal/latitude differences. It looks like they just repurposed the 24 hour complication on the movement.

If it were accurate, it could be useful knowing how long until sunrise/sunset as opposed to the state of things at the moment

WIStful wrote: ↑

April 27th 2024, 9:40am

... It looks like they just repurposed the 24 hour complication on the movement.

If it were accurate, it could be useful knowing how long until sunrise/sunset as opposed to the state of things at the moment

Yes, that's all it is. It has no relationship with sunrise/sunset times.

Good to see the family carrying on after their father died. Fred was a trailblazer and was amazing to his customers. I know a lot of their business is contract watches but I hope they make it in the sea of micros.

The Binnacle Timer they recently released is a quite nice compressor

https://www.bernhardtwatch.com/products/binnacle-timer

I like that they assemble in the USA.

I emailed Fred once about a new case for a field diver I planned to gift. He said fifty bucks and sent it back with a new case, crystal, bracelet and wooden presentation box with signed warranty card.

https://www.bernhardtwatch.com/pages/our-story

Racer-X wrote: ↑

April 28th 2024, 12:58pm

I emailed Fred once about a new case for a field diver I planned to gift. He said fifty bucks and sent it back with a new case, crystal, bracelet and wooden presentation box with signed warranty card.

https://www.bernhardtwatch.com/pages/our-story

While this new Bernhardt doesn't give me a hardon, Fred was one of the true CS revolutionaries in the trade. I had bought a Globemaster second hand, with a stuck rotor. I emailed him for service, and he had me send it in, and got it back to me in two weeks running fine, with no bill for the service.

Good luck getting service like that outside of warranty from any other company.

Only positive things to say about Fred, his watches and his warranty. One of the first watches I bought when I started collecting was his original automatic Binnacle then a Corsair then several Sea Sharks and an Anchor in later days. Always a pleasure speaking with him.

conjurer wrote: ↑

April 28th 2024, 10:31pm

While this new Bernhardt doesn't give me a hardon,

I have been slagging on the utility of a day night indicator but I actually quite like this watch

The dial and casework are excellent, the nautical theme is consistent and coherent and the case back engraving is one of the few I have ever found interesting.

Really captures the mystery and romance of the sea at night. Makes me want to read some Melville

And the day night indicator looks very very cool at night.

If I get around to buying a three hander black dial this will be oretty high in the list

And if Melville isn’t your thing, this traditional tune recorded by Doc Watson and friends, same idea.

I am goimg to talk myself into one of these

Guess I am given to nautical musings today, it being the 36th anniversary of the grounding of the USS Sam Houston in Puget Sound on the south shore of Fox Island.

Oh DEAR! Somebody received an almighty maritime bollocking that day!

Grounding is pretty much the #1 naval awshit, prime imperative of navy is keep the ship in the water. Whole crew got a nonstop bollocking for at least 7 months after and lingered on for about 18 months after the event.

Colossally stupid, took a lot of teamwork to generate that much stupidity. So much so that this incident was mandatory reading during quarterly submarine anti grounding training for 20 years thereafter.

My housemate was officer of the deck, could have been me as he relieved me. But whole crew got flogged relentlessly once we got refloated and into dry dock.l

Media coverage was intense. These pics are right after grounding. By nightfall the place was swarming with mefia on the ground and in choppers overhead. Top story on sll three 6 o clock news shows, AP, UPI, and a brief but widespread panic in Puget Sound atea which was extremely anti nuke then. Local media suggesting we had an ongoing reactor incident that the Navy was lying about and so forth.

Gave me a lifelong interest in how maritime and aviation and other industrial accidents happen, like the ship that just brought down the Key Bridge. Be interesting to read the play by play if investigation gets published. We do know they did drop port anchor in an ultimately futile attempt to pivot themselves around the bridge support.

Loss of situational awareness is almost always involved in groundings just like in aviation equivalent of controlled flight into terrain.


But yeah, god tier bollocking ensued. Interesting experience in retrospect. A couple of my pals we are preferred rec sailing/cruising buddies because we have had our cherries popped on taking things for granted, running on assumptions, normalcy buas, that sort of thing.

Big nuke power accidents usually have the same dynamic, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima all did.