SPINNAKER Piccard

Paying tribute to the legendary Swiss oceanographer, Jacques Piccard, who along with US Naval Lieutenant, Don Walsh descended an astonishing 10’911 meters to the bottom of the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific Ocean – this is the Spinnker Piccard.

On the 23rd of January, 1960 the two men went down in the equally legendary, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe, Trieste into the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of Mariana Trench.



The Trieste which was designed by Jacques Piccard’s father, Auguste Piccard famously took one more deep diving pioneer along for the ride, a Rolex experimental watch named the Deep Sea Special.

I guess we could say that the Spinnaker Piccard while unique in its design draws inspiration from that watch.



The Piccard has an imposing 47mm in diameter by 25mm-thick case made from Titanium. This is offered in two finishes: one in plain Titanium and a second with a gold IP coating.



The case is equipped with a Helium Escape Valve and a massively domed Sapphire crystal glass. Beneath the Sapphire dome is the dial the design of which was inspired by the Trieste’s instruments.


Powering the Piccard is a Swiss made Sellita SW200 automatic movement. Water-resistance is 1000 meters. MSRP is 950USD.



Thoughts? I had to check the water-resistance several times to make sure that I wasn’t mistaken because given the watch’s ample build I was expecting something a little more extreme perhaps even an extra zero.


It's no CH1 but the design of the watch has plenty of appeal to fans of these sorts of experimental-type dive watches. There are some really nice design elements;

the case design itself, the offset HEV, the dial and the case-back engraving but it hasn’t got the depth rating to back it up, so I am wondering what the point is? What do you think?