WATCH TO WATCH

Smart Sailing: The Breitling Exospace B55 Yachting


Under its new ownership and management, Breitling has reached beyond its traditional identity as an aviation brand and begun to embrace a more well-rounded “land, sea, and air” approach to its new models. The latest example of this is its launch of the Exospace B55 Yachting, a Bluetooth-enabled, device-connected watch for sailors that follows up the original Exospace B55 watch, which was engineered for pilots.

Breitling Exospace B55 Yachting - front
The Breitling Exospace B55 Yachting is packed with technology useful to professional yachtsmen.

Whereas the first Exospace B55 from 2015 was chock full of pilot-friendly functions — electronic tacyhmeter, recording of flight times and block times, memory storage for departure dates, arrival times, and takeoff and landing times — the new model is equipped with a range of tools developed with yachting professionals and regatta competitors in mind. Powered by Breitling’s thermocompensated SuperQuartz movement, the watch includes a chronograph with analog and digital displays and a cleverly designed countdown system with audible, visible, and vibrating alarms and indications. The countdown timer, a feature emblematic of regatta-timing watches, is notable for the ease with which it can be reset and re-synched to a new countdown if a judge stops and re-starts the countdown to the start of a regatta. Chronograph split times, also useful data in any type of race timing, can be stored in the watch’s memory and displayed on either the watch’s digital screen or on a smartphone that is synched to the watch. Additionally, the notched, unidirectional compass bezel on the 46-mm titanium case can be used to calculate wind directions, sailing angles, and optimal starting-line positioning.

Breitling Exospace B55 Yachting - reclining
The watch’s countdown function can be easily re-set after a stoppage.

The chronograph is also extremely accurate, able to tally up to 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds to the nearest 10 milliseconds. Like its predecessors, the Exospace B55 Yachting can be paired, via a dedicated app, with a smartphone using Bluetooth Low Energy technology. Communication between the watch and device is two-way, allowing settings to be configured remotely: wearers can thus use their phones to make adjustments to the time and time zone settings, electronic alarms, display preferences, and operating parameters. Also, measurements made by the watch’s chronograph and stored in its electronic memory can be uploaded from the timepiece to the phone, rendering these measurements more easy to read on the larger screen. Like other “connected” watches, the B55 also receives notifications of incoming emails, texts, phone calls, and appointment reminders. The “SuperQuartz” movement is 10 times more accurate than a standard quartz watch movement, powered by a rechargeable battery system and, as are all Breitling movements, chronometer-certified by the Swiss testing agency COSC.

The Breitling Exospace B55 Yachting is available at retail now, priced at $7,170.

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