Dads watch

I'm not sure when he bought it but I think it was in the late 70's, but Dad was pretty proud of his Omega Seamaster. However he expected it to be a tool not just an icon of his success.

It was a Cosmic 2000 and Dad had the view that such expensive things should be fully functional and last a life time. Strangely he never applied the same view of service and maintenance to his watch as he did his boat.

He regularly worked in it, and it was his daily driver. Suffering working with him (as I did) on everything from boat building to working with steel, working on cars, to making truck bodies

Every mark on it was evidence of a life lived with Dad

So after under 2 decades it stopped working; he took it to a watch maker who informed him that he should have had the seals checked and replaced some time back because salt water (boats, ocean and fishing) had made its way in and everything was stuffed inside. He was shocked at the price of fixing that and complained that such an expensive watch would fail was "bullshit". Like so many other things which had (in his view) failed him, he blamed the watch and tossed into a drawer.

After Dad had passed I had to go through his belongings and sort out his estate. I found the watch and pondered if I'd repair it and keep it or sell it to someone who had just those skills. I did this (for not much money) because I had no desire to wear it ever.

Some years after he bought that (more than 5 less than 10) I'd bought my Seiko Sports 100 which was a 1979 manufacture, so about the same as Dads Cosmic. Unlike his Cosmic I chose to send mine to Seiko for seals and pressure test at every battery change (about 4 years) and so accordingly my Seiko is still with me and still working now.

it too was my daily driver, went through the same stuff as Dads, but including more construction work and diving than Dads.

My watch has held up and is still on the original bracelet, which is more than I can say for the Omega. Perhaps the Omega would have been working still were it serviced occasionally, but perhaps those services would have bought a new watch a few times over. Hard to say if it would be different with the Seiko ...

Personally I have a strong fondness for my Sports 100 quite simply because it reflects on the many places I went to and shows the marks of the many things I did. Strangely I don't think my wife ever saw me wearing it ... for its battery died for (almost) the last time in 2004 and I didn't put a battery back into it until mid last year. She bought me a watch in Finland, which was just a budget training watch, which helped me for some years of ski training. With some regret I don't have that watch anymore. I will (of course) keep the Sports 100 but I only put it on now and then to explore some aspects of its fit and feel, and then I return it to its box. Our story together is perhaps over except for the sentimental value of it.

Occasionally I wonder where Dads watch is ... but not for long.