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My adventure watch – this is what I wear when shooting, fishing or hunting… My adventure watch – this is what I wear when shooting, fishing or hunting…

My adventure watch – this is what I wear when shooting, fishing or hunting…

Jason Marsden

My collection has some reasonably serious luxury sports watches in it from the likes of Rolex, Omega et al.  Watches that will withstand more rigours and abuse than I’m ever likely to throw at them. However, when I’m off outdoors – four-wheel driving, shooting, fishing or hunting – they stay safely locked away and I typically reach for my Luminox Navy SEAL Colormark.

I have plenty of admiration for those watch enthusiasts that use and abuse their luxury sports/dive watch in the environments that they were designed for.  Much like a sports car owner that track races their vehicle.  But the additional wear and tear / risk of loss due to snagging a tree branch, banging a rock during a stream crossing or wrestling with a D-shackle underwater during a recovery, is just too far outside my comfort zone.

I know if I smash up or lose my Luminox it can be replaced relatively easily and for much less than the cost of a service on a luxury Swiss watch.  To date the only required replacement was the strap.  This means I can concentrate on the task at hand without concern for what’s on my wrist.

Luminox was founded in 1989 and was fully acquired by Mondaine in 2016.  Throughout their history they have amassed an impressive set of armed forces clients and collaborators, with the best known and earliest being the US Navy SEALs.  The first SEAL watch was launched back in 1994 (Ref 3001).

My Luminox, ref 3050/3950, was purchased back in 2007 from a then recently opened Bass Pro store in Ontario Mills, Los Angeles.  At $365 USD it was a fair investment for me at the time, but my mantra of “holiday money does not count”, coupled with the novelty of the Tritium illumination won out.

Why not just wear a G-Shock?  They are certainly tough and proven watches, field worn by many extreme outdoor professionals, and I do own a couple. But for me the Luminox has several advantages.  First up it has an easy-to-read, intuitive and uncluttered analogue dial.  As packed with features as G-Shocks are, this can come at the expense of legibility especially on their ani-digi offerings.  The likes of the digital display only GW-5000 or simple DW5600 would be the go-to in legibility if I was to swap out.

Invariably when I’m camping, I’ll wake up in the night and want to know how long until I need to crawl out of the sleeping bag to make a dawn hunt, a quick look at the wrist will provide the time due to the small, always glowing, Tritium gas tubes at the indices, on the hands and at the 12 o’clock on the bezel.  No button push required.    The half-life on these constantly glowing micro tubes is around 12 years.  My watch is now 14 years old and can still be easily read in complete darkness.  To contrast with a G-Shock, sometimes their side illumination is not the best for an easy night-time read.

The Carbonox case has also held up extremely well, not displaying any major wear or rounding off of the bezel as some plastic bezels on other brands can suffer from.  The mineral crystal has to be examined very closely to see any micro scratches now present.  At 44mm it wears smaller, the 56g weight makes it unnoticeable on the wrist and the Swiss-made Rhonda 515 HH6 movement has run faultlessly.

The lack of a screw-down crown and case back secured by four stainless screws may not instill full confidence in the 200m depth rating, but to date with the help of a little watch grease on the O-rings (I change the battery myself) water damage has never been an issue.

Out of all my dive watches the bezel on my Luminox gets the most use, timing the 10 or 15 minutes required for my dehydrated meals to rehydrate. This can seem like the longest 10 minutes ever at the end of a hard day’s walk with a heavy pack in New Zealand’s cold, wet weather.

Today Luminox offer a huge range of watches including chronographs and metal-cased automatics.  But my go to, use and abuse watch, and the one that will remain part of my collection, is their basic Carbonox-cased SEAL offering. When the going gets tough, you want one on your wrist.