Elliot Brown Broadstone Adventurer: Performance

Of course you don’t have to be a sailor to wear this watch, it will serve you perfectly well on dry land. But we were lucky enough to have the chance to try it out on one of the actual Clipper boats themselves.

Unfortunately on the day we sailed out into the Solent there was very little wind, but what the weather lacked in pushing power it more than made up for with near-constant drizzle. So although neither the boat nor our sailing skills were particularly tested, the waterproofness of the Broadstone Adventurer certainly was, and we’re pleased to say it passed with flying colours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as it’s waterproof up to 200m, or 20 atmospheres of pressure, so designed to handle much worse.

“We strapped some watches to the masts of the boats for 40,000 miles. They were fine”

The watch was straightforward to set the time and date on and comfortable to wear with an easy-adjusting strap. The material the glass is made of has apparently been changed so the watch is “a lot more scratch resistant” than previous ones, and it survived a day of scrambling around and wrestling with ropes without any visible marks.

A day wearing it obviously wasn’t enough to judge its long-term durability, but based on Elliot Brown’s record that won’t be a problem. Last year’s Clipper special edition watches were worn by the race’s 12 professional skippers “for 40,000 miles,” Alex Brown told Outdoors Magic, “and we had some actually strapped to the boats as well”.