Do you wear a dive watch?

Do you wear a dive watch?


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I always wear a watch. I have taken a fondness for Citizen Ecodrive watches but still prefer a mechanical self winding watch like the Seiko 007 (which is a wonderful and inexpensive dive watch). I like setting my watch on the night stand and in the quiet of the night hear the ticking.

I wear a dive watch when diving and use them on each dive. Sure, I could look at the computer and READ the elapsed time but with a watch I can SEE the elapsed time. And I do not have to push any buttons.

For three years I visited SoFla and a particular dive chain store. There in the corner of the case was a sad TiZilla. Missing it's box, papers and bezel and barely making do with the case lighting to keep it's little capacitor beating. Poor thing. Each year I looked at it and each year they gave me a ridiculous price. Then one year, I asked, expecting the same answer and the lady said you are the only person who asks about that watch, once every year! Apparently she remembered. So, finally, they sold it to me for virtually nothing and I walked out of the store and right back in and asked her to send it to Citizen, which she laughed and gladly did. Two months later, my TiZilla arrived in my mailbox, complete and ready to rock and NO CHARGE!

And I am known not to carry a cell phone all the time. And sun dials are cool, I have a few but they do not work so well on my wrist.

One time, years ago, I walked into the woods of the Bob Marshall Wilderness area and did not come out for weeks. I ate bark and bugs, wrasseled griz, caught fish with my hands and slept in a tree ( to avoid being eaten buy the afore mentioned griz). You know, I did not see any USB ports on the rocks, none in that pine tree either! But my auto winding Seiko kept time for me. Then one day I walked out, hitched a ride to a restaurant (I think it was a Denny's) and ate five full meals. Then the cute waitress drove me back to my Ford van. I think I will end the story there.

Merry Christmas,
N
 
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I use a dive watch to time exorcises during pool instruction. I own three. I oi not use any of them for real dives.

The first dive watch I owned was Swiss Army. On two different occasions I was doing pool dives and realized after a while that it was running 10-15 minutes slow. It had apparently stopped for a while and then started up again. That is a really bad thing for a dive timer to do during a dive, since you have no way of knowing it happened and think your dive was a lot shorter than it actually was. I stuck that in the back of a drawer years ago and have not seen it since.

The most expensive of the three is a Tag Heuer that I usually wear on a day to day basis. I do not use it for pool diving because I cannot see the stylish hands or the bezel clearly under water. I am currently using the middle priced one, a Seiko, for daily use because the Tag Heuer was suddenly several hours off and behaving erratically. I assume it is a power problem, but I can't be sure until I take it to a shop to see. I can see the Seiko's hands pretty well, but the bezel is hard to see, and it would be next to no help if I ever needed it. I absolutely cannot turn that bezel with gloves on--I know that because I actually did use it once as a backup timer for a decompression dive and had to take my gloves off to set the time at the start of the dive. I had a hard enough time setting it with the gloves off.

In comparison, I have completed nearly 1,500 dives on computers over nearly 20 years, and none has failed. I wear two computers now so I have redundancy. They give me a warning as the battery begins to get low so I can change it with plenty of time to spare. The display is bright and easy to read for my aging eyes, even in the worst visibility. To give you an example, I was once working in the entrance of a cave, intentionally creating a silt out as I moved rocks to enlarge the opening. Suddenly the silt got even worse, and I could not see a thing. Then I saw a computer face, clearly readable despite the silt. It was the same brand as mine, but it wasn't mine. It was the computer of a teammate of mine who was exiting the cave. I could not see him at all because of the silt, but I could read his computer clearly. My two computers give me amazing information, and the two together do not cost as much as a new Tag Heuer.
 
Yes technically that is not a dive watch without a bezel. Here is the same company with a bezel and a sapphire lens. Also cheaper at $99.00 ... Although the sapphire crystal adds $35.00.

"Without a settable bezel for timing, how can you consider this a dive watch?"

1M-DV74R7B.jpg
 
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This is my biggest fear, a fish asking what time it is and I am unable to answer.

There is a specific reason casinos don't have clocks. Same applies to scuba.
 
I've thought about using a dive watch and depth gauge instead of a computer for dives where NDLs are not a limiting factor.
 
To dive safely a diver must have 4 basics instruments. A SPG, a depth gage, a compass, and an under water timing device. To me rolling all these instruments into one device (dive computer) is ill advised. Personally I do not operate any of my computers air integrated and would not depend on one for air pressure, and I do wear a dive watch even when running 2 computers on a dive. A simple wrist watch with a one way rotating bezel, water resistant to 200 meters should be part of every divers personal equipment. JMO and I believe that of certification agencies.



Planned, square profile dives which are the result of timers and tables have never reflected the reality of the diving that I do and always resulted in inaccurate representations of my dive, and in my experience have been fraught with abbreviated bottom time as a result of diving a sawtooth profile against a planned square profile. I quickly learned to employ dive planning software, two computers, and most importantly - a little common sense to my dive planning and execution. When calculation technology exists that is far less error prone than a human, and far more adept at tracking multiple dynamic data points, I will always make the choice for more accurate, and easier every time. It is extremely easy to make a mistake with a table and bend yourself. Even if you THINK you know what you are doing.
 
I dive two watches on every dive. They're both digital. They both are fancy and have the feature that, in addition to time (and date), they tell me my current depth, and they tell me my NDL, and, if I exceed my NDL, they tell me what deco stops to make.
 
Yes technically that is not a dive watch without a bezel. Here is the same company with a bezel and a sapphire lens. Also cheaper at $99.00 ... Although the sapphire crystal adds $35.00.

"Without a settable bezel for timing, how can you consider this a dive watch?"

1M-DV74R7B.jpg

note that they do not mention "rotating bezel". I've seen many that thought it looked cool to make it look like a dive watch, but forgot the essential idea that it actually needs to rotate (and also a single direction). I am curious to the actual capabilities of this watch, but skeptical. If you see how many slightly different versions they have.....
 
I also use a watch flying.

And btw, Tag and SA are not a particularly good dive watch brand.

N
 
this one continues to intrigue me at the price-point... (manual says they are real)

upload_2016-12-26_9-41-44.png
 

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