The Rolex Yacht-Master II: No Yacht Required

Rolex as a rule, does not make complicated watches, or at least it doesn’t make any watches that make use of any of the traditional high complications. There’s no Rolex perpetual calendar, no Rolex rattrapante chronograph (although Rolex did make at least one rattrapante chrono that I’m aware of, which is the ultra-rare reference 4113) and unless something turns up in the drawer of a desk that used to belong to Hans Wilsdorf, there is no Rolex repeater – in fact, Rolex has never made an alarm watch, although Tudor did make the alarm-equipped Advisor, which was produced from the 1950s through the 1970s, and which made a brief reappearance in the Tudor catalogue in 2011. Rolex’s stock-in-trade for most of its history has been making relatively simple, precise, and highly durable watches and when it does make complicated watches, they tend to be either technically up-to-the-minute takes on traditional and useful complications (like the Daytona) or unusual takes on standard complications, like the Day-Date.

There are, however, two watches in the current Rolex catalogue which are both very specific in terms of their functionality and design, and very unusual technically. These are the Sky-Dweller, which launched in 2012, and the Yacht-Master II, which came out several years earlier, in 2007. The Sky-Dweller is a dual time-zone watch with annual calendar, and its caliber 9001 has 380 components; the Yacht-Master is a flyback/fly-forward regatta chronograph, with the caliber 4161, which has 360 components (both parts counts are per Rolex) making it the second most complex Rolex in the current catalogue. The caliber 4161 is based on the chronograph movement in the Daytona, the 4131, and the Yacht-Master II is a very unusual take on a very unusual complication: the regatta timer.

We took a quick look at the regatta timer as a complication on the occasion of the recent announcement of the new TAG Heuer Skipper – a regatta timer is basically a countdown timer, designed to do one thing and one thing only: let the skipper of a racing yacht know how many minutes and seconds are left before the starting signal is given, and the competing boats can cross the starting line. Split-second timing accuracy is essential – if you cross too early, you’ll be penalized, which can cost you the race, but playing it safe usually means other boats will cross ahead of you, which can leave you in a trailing position from which it is impossible to recover.

Rolex And The Refinement Of The Regatta Timer

The Yacht-Master II was the result of Rolex doing something very characteristic of the company, which is to look at a particular environment and application and pull out all the stops to make as technically advanced a solution for that application as possible. The result is one of the most complex but also versatile regatta timers that anyone has ever made. The Yacht-Master II introduced the Ring Command Bezel, which is used to engage and disengage the setting function for the countdown timer.

The Yacht-Master II has a standard set of hour and minute hands, as well as a sub-dial at 6:00 for the running seconds. At the center of the dial, and on the same axis as the hour and minute hands, are the chronograph seconds hand, and the triangle-tipped countdown minutes hand. To set the number of minutes to count down, rotate the bezel counterclockwise until it won’t go any further (about a quarter turn). The next step is to push in the lower chronograph pusher. Then, unscrew the crown and turn it clockwise to set the countdown minute hand. (The hand only moves counterclockwise but if you keep turning the crown when it reaches the number ten, it will jump back to the one minute mark and you can continue the setting operation). Screw the crown back in and turn the bezel back to its starting position, and you’ve set the countdown timer.

Starting and stopping the countdown is done with the upper pusher, and reset to zero from the stopped position, with the lower. If you press the lower pusher while the countdown timer is running, the chronograph seconds hand will fly back to zero and begin running again, like a conventional flyback chronograph, while the triangular countdown minute hand will jump backwards or forwards to the nearest minute. This is to allow you to resynchronize your countdown with the official countdown signals, as the moment of the official start nears.

So who’s the Yacht-Master for? Well, obviously it’s designed for anyone who sails competitively. Now, that’s a fairly small audience nowadays. Sailing in general has declined considerably in popularity over the last few decades, from an estimated 12.5 million Americans sailing recreationally or competitively in the 1980s, to just 2.5 million or so today. Sail magazine reported back in 2017 that according to the Coast Guard, just 2% of all registered boats were sailboats. The article speculates that one of the reasons power-boating is so much more popular is that in addition to being easier, it actually looks and sounds a lot easier as well, and that to some extent sailboat skippers are to blame for leaning hard into the obscure terminology of sailing, and also for making sailing seem more demanding than it is in order to impress non-sailors (a temptation anyone who has flaunted their insider watch vocabulary to a non-enthusiast can certainly understand).

The natural environment for the Yacht-Master II is a specific sport. But I don’t think you have to own or race a sailing yacht in order to enjoy wearing one, any more than you have to be a pilot to enjoy wearing a pilot’s watch, or a scuba diver to enjoy a dive watch (though there is no doubt that there is a lot of fun to be had in using technical watches in their intended environments for their intended purposes). A ten-minute countdown chronograph may not be as widely useful as a standard chronograph, but the Yacht-Master II is an ingeniously complex solution to a very particular set of problems. If the enjoyment of owning and using a technical watch, is in the degree to which it expresses the world for which it was made, the Yacht-Master II has a lot to offer – versatility is great, but specificity has its own pleasures.

Sailing is like nothing else. The feeling of the wind pressing against the sails and the hull cutting through the water gives a sense of deep connection to the wind and sea you can’t get from blundering through the waves making a godawful noise in a powerboat, and there’s a sense of connection as well to a deep well of history. The Yacht-Master II may have been designed for regattas, but the pleasure of doing things the old fashioned way is something any watch enthusiast can understand.