Buyer’s guide to the latest marine watches

This Swiss-engineered watch looks a little less like a purpose-built race timer and more like a regular sports watch, even with its oversized face. The styling alone enhances the watch’s versatility on and off the water.

The 65mm-diameter rotating face gives you large 16mm digit readouts, surrounded by a ring of easy-to-press silicon buttons. The timer can simultaneously display both the race countdown and time, and offers multiple start sequence options, including World Sailing 5-4-1-0 and match-racing.

Regular features include 12 or 24-hour time, date, alarm and stopwatch function. Priced at $159.95. Find out more at whitworths.com.au.

Also designed for racing sailors, but with bolder styling and smaller watch faces, this range of 50mm and 40mm sailing watches mirrors all the functions of Ronstan’s Clearstart Race Timer.

They give racers the start sequence and countdown features they need, plus race synchronisation (if you start the countdown early or late), and display real time and countdown simultaneously.

Apart from how they look and feel on your wrist, where Ronstan’s Sailing Watch differs from the Race Timer is in the smaller size of its digit displays – 13mm in the 50mm model (priced at $101), and 10mm in the smaller 40mm version (priced at $91.55).

Find out more at monkeyfist.com.au.

With its elegant, luxurious design and rated to a depth of 500m (50 bar/49 ATM), the Luminor Marina is not only a fine-looking watch, but a tough beast, too.

To understand the true quality of materials and craftsmanship in this watch, you’d need to dive deep into watchmaking excellence. For example, the steel isn’t just ordinary stainless, but premium, vacuum-remelted austenitic stainless steel as used in pacemakers and bone screws.

There’s a traversing balance bridge, which secures the balancing wheel on both sides of the watch for optimum shock resistance and chronometric precision, and a stop-second function for absolute time-setting precision. Priced at $14,800. Find out more at panerai.com.

Designed in Australia and utilising Japanese quartz chronograph movement, the Ronstan Clearstart is built with a durable 2mm mineral crystal lens to protect against scratching, and a robust brushed matt black stainless steel case.

Water resistant to 100m (10 ATM), it offers the usual features (time, date and stopwatch) plus a 5-minute race countdown for when things get competitive. With a 43mm watch face, it’s smaller than the dedicated race timers previously detailed, making it more at ease off the water. Priced at $185.84

Find out more at monkeyfist.com.au.

This watch might well change the way you run your boat. How about being able to control the helm while you’re not actually standing at it, via Bluetooth voice commands spoken directly to your watch.

A built-in speaker and microphone that allows you to literally ‘talk’ to the autopilot from the bow (and your Force trolling motor and Fustion stereo, too), also allows you to make and take phone calls and voice messages wherever you have a 4G signal, and via satellite where you don’t.

Providing you have a Garmin-compatible MFD and autopilot, you can change course, set waypoints, and stream a whole swag of data from your helm to your watch.

Use the watch to trigger an SOS alert and coordinate rescue, get weather forecasts, and share your location with friends and family via LiveTrack and the inbuilt Garmin Messenger app, which lets you communicate directly with other app users, and syncs with your smartphone for other contacts.

Garmin calls it their nautical smartwatch, and the list of boating-specific features is long. You get a MOB function, a 40m dive rating, the ability to set tide change alerts, task assist mode, and countdown timers for racers. Use it for contactless purchases back on the dock, and to track your sailing trips and watersports rides.

Priced at $2299. You’ll also need to subscribe to an inReach plan for calls and messaging (from $13.50/month).

Find out more at garmin.com.

If you take away the inReach satellite technology and the capacity to directly make and take phone calls, but add a slightly larger, more readable watch face and a recycled ocean-bound plastic housing, you get Garmin’s Quatix 8 51mm smartwatch.

It still gives you all the standard boating and diving features of the Quatix 8, and the same titanium bezel, sapphire lens and ultra-clear AMOLED display, but you’ll need to pair the watch with a nearby smartphone to make and take calls and texts. Extra perks with this non-pro version include an extended battery life of up to 29 days, and a slightly lower price tag of $2191.11.

Find out more at monkeyfist.com.au.

A classic among timepieces, Omega’s Seamaster Diver 300M is available in 59 variations in a range of sizes from 41 to 44mm, with every imaginable type of strap, six dial colours, and cases in ceramic, 18K gold, steel (and gold steel), titanium, and tantalum – a highly corrosion-resistant, very hard, lustrous, blue-gray metal.

You can also choose from six collections, including the 007 Edition, Milano Cortina 2026 range, and the Chronograph Collection.

Made in Switzerland, Seamaster Diver 300M features include a helium escape value, unidirectional diving bezel, 300m water resistance, and self-winding movement. Priced from around $10,000.

Find out more at omegawatches.com.

In the 1940s, Longines helped the UK Hydrographic Institute design the very first diving wristwatches for Royal Navy divers. Longines Legend Diver watches are heritage-inspired timepieces that pay homage to its celebrated 1959 diving watch.

The 2026-model Legend Diver 59 is the newest iteration, integrating cutting-edge watchmaking performance within a 42mm stainless-steel case. It features a refined Milanese mesh bracelet, a self-winding mechanical movement (power reserve up to 72 hours) and an internal bidirectional rotating bezel. Priced at $6200.

Find out more at longines.com.