Lucky ol’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Replica : those who were fortunate enough to see the exhibition a few years ago in Paris will know that there are enough variants of the Fifty Fathoms to keep the maison in limited editions for, oh, a hundred years. This one, the Barakuda, is among the coolest, thanks to a little touch that differentiates it from a regular Fifty Fathoms and which is slightly reminiscent of sister brand Omega’s so-called “racing dials”, as found on the Speedmaster Professional “Tintin”.
It’s amazing what a tiny dash of color can add to a timepiece that, even in its most common form, is one of the most handsome diving watches ever produced. This has been so for 66 years, while this year’s addition to the Fifty Fathoms Collection, Ref, 5008B-1130-B52A, harks back to the tail-end of the 1960s. As is the company’s wont, they’ve balanced the character of the original with updated technical elements, mainly the movements; to put it mildly, first-generation Fifty Fathoms used rather ordinary calibers, while this has a twin-barrel automatic.
Its tale is oft-told, but to recap, the Fifty Fathoms was born in 1953, and it vies with a certain rival from Geneva for the title of “world’s first SCUBA-ready diving watch.” Not a debate I care to enter, suffice it to say, this watch has peerless provenance. Designed by and for French military divers, it helped define the diving watch template of superlative legibility, rotating bezel to show elapsed or remaining time and security against moisture ingress to better-than-diving depths.
When the German Bundesmarine adopted the FF for its frogmen in the 1960s, the elected supplier was a company named Barakuda, which specialised in the production and marketing of technical diving equipment.(Replica Patek Philippe Watches) Barakuda also served civilian clientele, the public being presented with a model that would distinguish it from the plain vanilla model used by the Bundesmarine.
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