Diving With The Nivada Grenchen Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver - A Watch For Divers, Pilots, & Racing Drivers

Our Resident Diving Historian Dives The Vintage Reissue With Vintage Gear

By Jacob Van Buren

At the dawn of recreational SCUBA, the earliest adopters were hunters. Lobstering and spearfishing were their primary aims. The advent of the “Aqua-Lung” in 1943 allowed these pioneering undersea hunters to remain submerged longer, sad news for their prey. A magazine dedicated to this niche hobby appeared in 1951 bearing the name of their tribe—The Skin Diver and later Skin Diver Magazine. By the middle of the 1950s, the periodical centered around adventures of the Aqua-Lung, its pages also quickly filling with advertisements for various apparatuses, equipment, and pioneering water-resistant watches all intended for the life aquatic. If one happened to be reading the December 1961 issue, they’d have been treated to an advertisement showcasing the latest skin diver’s watch from Nivada Grenchen—the Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver.

Nivada's then-new Chronomaster in Skin Diver Magazine, December 1961.

This wasn’t the Swiss firm’s first diver’s watch. The charming Depthomatic—complete with a capillary depth gauge—was featured in Skin Diver Magazine as early as 1960. But the Chronomaster was different from anything the brand, or any other brand, produced during that decade. Featuring a chronograph, tachymeter, yacht timer, and a dual-scale elapsed time and secondary timezone bezel, the watch was markedly ambitious in its scope. While perhaps novel, it’s the earnestness with which the watch achieves this ambitious skill set that renders it especially charming. Some have referred to the Chronomaster as the first smartwatch, but this almost seems unfair. A better analogy is perhaps that of a multitool—it contains a multitude of functions, many likely superfluous to the owner, yet they bring satisfaction all the same.

Unfortunately, Nivada Grenchen suffered the same fate as many niche brands in the 1970s as the industry was rocked by the changes brought on by inexpensive quartz calibers. Luckily for enthusiasts, the brand was relaunched in 2018 with the Antarctic and Chronomaster leading a collection propelled by faithful re-editions of its core models from decades gone by. Around the same time, I found myself at an antique show chatting with a vintage dealer. A flash of red caught my eye, and a Croton-dialed Chronomaster—otherwise visually identical to my reissued example here—was soon in my hands. My undergraduate finances at that time did not allow me to leave with it, but the watch left its mark. I knew I’d have to have one someday.

Now, several years later, I found myself standing at the water’s edge securing a Chronomaster on a Tropic-style rubber strap to my wrist, the mid-century reissue right at home nestled amongst the sort of gear a skin diver—as practitioners of SCUBA were commonly referred to at the time—would have used around the time the watch was released.  At least in my opinion, a period watch deserves period gear, so I’ve come equipped with kit appropriate to the early 1960s.

Some of you will think I'm nuts, but I believe an old-school dive watch deserves old-school diving equipment. Also, I didn't die.

Conducting a swift flipping motion, the yellow dual hoses of my U.S. Divers Aquamaster regulator flew over my head and thumped against the rubber neoprene jacket. Taking a short puff of air through the black mouthpiece, I grabbed my mask and Duck Feet fins and waddled toward the water.

US Navy Diver Brock Stevens wore a Sangin Hydra for our dive in Lake Phoenix.

My friend and dive buddy for the day, Brock Stevens (who some of you may recognize), steadied his more modern equipment and made his way to the water’s edge. We discussed the dive plan as we waded in. Looking around, we decided on a general direction. I spat in my mask, cleared it, and affixed it. We made eye contact and nodded. I grabbed the mouthpiece and began swimming off, quickly finding myself neutral within the water. Looking down, I moved the Chronomaster’s old-school friction-fit bezel to start timing the dive. My eyes moved over to my right wrist and the U.S. Divers Co. “Nemo” depth gauge there, making a note of our current depth. This particular site has a sharp thermocline—a transition point in the water where there is a noticeable change in temperature between layers—that we planned on avoiding.

We settled into neutral buoyancy quickly. Adjustments on either side of a couple of pounds are easily managed with the lungs. Gliding around, we stopped to admire the groups of fish attracted by the bubbles climbing out of our regulators’ exhaust. They are used to divers here at Lake Phoenix, a rare scuba-themed campsite and park in rural Rawlings, Virginia. I made a mental note to take it easy on the pace. My Aquamaster regulator is unbalanced, meaning the work of breathing is increased at higher tank pressures. As the dive progressed and I breathed more air, I slowly approached the regulator’s “sweet spot” where it started to live up to the advertising claim of it breathing “like drinking rich cream.”

Despite the wealth of information, the Nivada Grenchen is surprisingly effective underwater.

The Chronomaster’s dial has a pair of registers at nine and three, both of which are at times obscured by the broad arrow hour hand. The register at three o’clock tracks elapsed time on a thirty-minute scale while the opposing register at nine manages the running seconds. Glancing down, I’m surprised by how much the busy display fades into pure information—the long tapered minute hand pointing squarely at the dive time indicated on the dual-scale bezel.

There are drawbacks to the watch’s multifaceted nature and vintage inspiration. The crown does not screw down and the watch is rated to “only” 100M of water resistance, although period advertisements show some models were rated to 200m. Like any chronograph, the pushers also represent a potential point of failure. Nivada doesn’t expressly recommend diving with the Chronomaster, nor do they advertise activating the chronograph functions while diving. For what it's worth, I’ve had it down to 92 feet with no trouble. It’s important to remember that in the era when the watch was new, 60 feet was considered a deep dive. Rather than targeting the sort of diver who would dive the Andrea Doria on air, the watch was more broadly marketed toward those with active lifestyles—skin divers included—but also pilots or yachtsmen.

This particular modern variant, which will set you back around two grand, is the faux-patina version with a manually-wound Swiss caliber coming from Sellita, but the collection now numbers over 20 different options in various dials and movements, including patina and non-patina versions. My preference is for the former. As a dyed-in-the-wool vintage guy, what else would you expect? The downside of the faux patina look is the performance of the luminescent material. If the watch has a most prominent downside, it’s this. The lume simply isn’t very good. Even among more affordable divers, many options offer much better lume. In the early hours of the morning, one can barely make out the time. But taking a broad view of what the watch is and is trying to be, does that actually matter? For this diver and lover of all things vintage diving, it does not.

The watch came on a beads-of-rice bracelet that, while comfortable and well built for the price, didn’t quite possess the same vintage skin-diver charm as the Tropic-style rubber currently affixed to the watch. A stretch-link oyster-style bracelet is also available and a great option, likely to be on this watch in the future.

The only way to know what a dive watch is truly capable of is to get it under the surface.

Safely back on the surface, I remarked to Brock that diving is likely as close to time travel as either of us is ever going to get. Despite a few modern bells and whistles, dive gear today isn’t much different from what our predecessors descended with. But when you combine vintage gear with a great reissue watch like the Nivada, you’re transported straight into an experience like a diver could have had six decades ago.

Nivada Grenchen now has two dedicated dive watches in its lineup, the Depthmaster and Antarctic Diver. But, at least for me, the Chronomaster holds firm as one of their strongest offerings. A 1967 ad for the watch opined that it was “a watch for all time”, and they were right. Sixty years later, Nivada Grenchen’s Chronomaster remains a charming tool, one that always reminds you that it has a role in every adventure in your life. Never entirely out of place, the Chronomaster brings with it a jack-of-all-trades confidence that, while capable behind a desk, is yearning for a more adventure-filled life.

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Thanks to Jacob Van Buren (@sea_vue) for the excellent topside photos and Brock Stevens (@deepsea.edc) for the awesome underwater images in this edition of the Dive Log.