Sea Venture, now fully funded on Kickstarter, is a series of vintage-styled dive watches designed and created by Aoede Watch Company in Massachusetts. They describe the watch as follows:
I received the watch in a nice padded case featuring the Aoede logo.A fully-functional dive watch capable of 100M / 330FT water resistance, the Sea Venture has a 40mm case size, marine-grade 316L stainless steel case, sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on the inside, a super-cool and colorful K1 hardened crystal uni-directional bezel, bright BGW9 lume on hand-placed indices, numbers, and pip, and a screwed-down signed crowned. Powering the Sea Venture is the Seiko TMI powered NH35A Automatic Movement -- a 24 jewel, 21,600 bph, self-winding movement with a 42-hour power reserve. This is a rock-solid, time-tested movement that will last many years.
Sea Venture is a very comfortable 40mm size. It's nice to see this size, as I believe it is accessible to more collectors, especially since it seems 42mm and up gets all the attention. It also follows their vintage styling philosophy.
The watch came on a black slip-through style strap with brushed hardware. This was the only negative for me personally, and it is a minor one; The strap looks and feels quite basic and it is too short for my 8" wrist. This is easy enough to change though for those who might have the same opinion. Just slip it off and attach one of the many straps that most collectors have laying around.
Sea Venture is a very attractive watch with a fun use of color and materials. An AR-coated sapphire crystal, K1 hardened crystal bezel, and BGW9 lume at this price point ($259! is a treat. The bezel is a stand-out. It's lovely to look at and the action is crisp and accurate. Some big-name brands could take lessons from Aoede on alignment.
Te crown is signed with the Aoede logo and is a good size. Screwing and unscrewing had a very positive feeling with no perceptible1 grit and the NH35 wound just as smoothly as all the others I own. Case finishing is overall very good, and the nautilus on the case back is pretty cool. Drilled lugs would have been a nice bonus, but definitely not a deal-breaker.
The night time party piece of Sea Venture is definitely the two-color BGW9 lume. It is a liberally applied to the hands, markers and bezel pip, and is bright and long-lasting. Time telling was extremely easy at 7:00am without my reading glasses after charging it under a lamp for roughly one minute at 11:00pm. Impressive!
Sea Venture is already fully funded on Kickstarter, and I have little doubt that those who backed it will be happy. It's a fun, comfortable, quality watch that would be a great addition to any collector's box.
Thank you, [mention]aoedebrian[/mention], and congratulations on your Kickstarter success!
Sea Venture can still be backed at the following link:
Visit Aoede Watch Company's brand showcase right here on our very own forum: viewforum.php?f=31