The First Dive Watch Certified to 1,000 Meters Is Back

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Are you one o’ them hardcore types — the guys for whom 100m of water resistance isn’t enough? Maybe you crave something more serious…a certified, deep-diving chunk of steel on your wrist that can take 1,000 meters of lickin’ and keep on tickin’?

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Surprisingly, there are several watches on the market that can tickle this particular fancy, from Rolexes such as the Sea-Dweller to Omegas such as the Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. All of them are delightful bits of overkill that see their parent companies vying for position in a never-ending quest to out-deep one another, with luminaries such as James Cameron and Victor Vescovo strapping the watches to the outside of their submersibles while they do doughnuts around the wreck of the Titanic.

Ok, maybe you don’t have the scratch to visit the bottom of the Challenger Deep — that’s fine. Because for about $2,000, you can nab yourself the Ollech & Wajs C-1000A, a special, 60th-anniversary model that celebrates the very first 1,000m-certified dive watch. And yes, you read that right: The first watch certified to 1,000 was not one from one of the big brands, but from a small, family-owned concern established in 1956 — when the big boys had already been working on water-resistant watches for decades. Manufactured using a monobloc (aka one-piece) design in which the movement was loaded through the dial side, the original Caribbean 1000 was used by all sorts of hardos, from oceanic explorers to soldiers and more.

If you follow the dive watch scene closely, you’ll know that Ollech & Wajs was revived from the dead in 2019 and released a version of the C-1000 back in 2020. The differences between that Mk. II model and the new C-1000A are subtle but significant: The original had shorty, “vampire fang”-like lugs, which are back for your Draculean pleasure. More notably, perhaps, the original had a rotating 12-hour bezel — not a dive bezel with a full count-up scale — and this, too, is back. (Look closely, and you’ll see that the first 20 minutes are demarcated, making for a useful combination-scale bezel that can do double-duty as a dive timer and as a “poor man’s” GMT.)

The date window on this bad boy has been moved to 6 o’clock from 3 o’clock — which is just fine, since it isn’t at 4:30, where no date window should ever be situated, for the love of God. And the monobloc case? That’s gone, swapped out in favor of a conventional screw-back type, albeit one measuring 39mm x 15.8mm thick. (Monobloc cases are no longer necessary for achieving 1,000+ of water resistance given modern case and gasket tech.) The dial itself is simple, mil-spec-like and effective: Loads of Super-LumiNova within the applied indices and sword hands are highly legible beneath the double-domed sapphire crystal, which is itself an upgrade from the original model’s acrylic.

One of the more interesting aspects of the new C-1000A isn’t actually visible to the wearer: While ETA doesn’t provide many movements to brands outside parent company Swatch Group brands, Ollech & Wajs evidently had 56 N.O.S. cal. 2824s lying around — meaning the first 56 allocations will be powered by that movement. (This may be the only time the inclusion of a 2824 has been a selling point rather than a “whatever,” but hey — it’s a workhorse movement! It gets the job done.) The rest of the watches will be outfitted with the Soprod Newton Precision P092, an automatic Swiss caliber with 44 hours of power reserve, hacking and a quick-change date function.

Though it ships on a 200mm yellow one-piece nylon strap with brushed steel hardware, you can alternatively spring for a 20mm rubber strap embossed with a cm/in scale as well as Morse code (cool) or your choice of a beads-of-rice bracelet with a double-deployant clasp or a brushed mesh type with an engraved pin buckle. The whole shebang will set you back about $2,142 — which, for a 1,000m-rated steel diver, ain’t too bad. (Especially considering its good looks.) Having handled several modern O&W, I’d recommend going for the comfortable beads-of-rice bracelet.
Available for purchase later in August, the C-1000A celebrates a vintage model without getting lost in the weeds of one-for-one homage territory, which can be limiting with respect to modern watchmaking capabilities. And even if you’re never planning on diving deeper than 40m, you can be assured of one crucial thing: This is a timepiece you can beat the hell out of and not worry about — which is sort of the entire point of a tool watch, anyway.