Years ago, Casio came out with a wrist watch that, at the time, was just about the perfect sailing watch for me. It had built in all the tools I needed.
First it kept chronometer-like time so I could rely on it for celestial navigation if the GPS failed. Then, it had an alarm that was easy to set so I would never be late for a night watch. It had a pale screen that would stay illuminated long enough to set the alarm. It had a stop-watch with several modes, which you can use for timing the flash-periods of occulting lighthouses.
Best of all, it had an altimeter-barometer built in that displayed a tracking of the last 24 hours of barometric pressure. This made the watch a game changer since weather at sea can be very local and pressure trends can tell you a lot about what’s coming.
But by today’s standards, that watch was pretty analogue and we definitely live in a digital, blue-tooth, wi-fi world. The boffins at Sailing Today magazine went out to see whast is what in sailing watches and wrote up their findings in a recent issue.
