IWC Just Dropped A Stunning New Portugieser Yacht Club Moon & Tide Edition

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IWC Just Dropped A Stunning New Portugieser Yacht Club Moon & Tide Edition

Without the annual Watches & Wonder show being able to take place this year due to the global pandemic, watch manufacturers have instead had to resort to inventive new ways to announce their latest models. IWC Schaffhausen has done just that with its new Portugieser collection, dedicating a landing page on its website to the new range, including videos from the company’s CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr, talking about the collection.

Among the number of updates and refreshes this year, is a brand new model in the form of the Yacht Club Moon & Tide, which becomes the first IWC watch to introduce the company’s new tide indication. At first glance, it looks similar to the Portugieser Yacht Club Chronograph, but on closer inspection, you’ll be able to notice differences in the subdials.

The 6 o’clock subdial now shows the expected time of high and low tides, made possible thanks to a complex mechanism. IWC points out that there is a time difference of 12 hours and 24 minutes between two high tides, due to the fact the moon doesn’t rotate around the Earth at the same rate the Earth completes its full 24-hour rotation. A clear way to explain this is that if high tide occurs at midnight, the next high tide will be 12.24 pm and then 00.48 am and so on and so forth.

IWC’s engineers, therefore, had to work this calculation into the Yacht Club Moon & Tide’s movement. To read the Tide display, you need to take note of where the small red arrow is pointing. IWC’s example says that if the arrow is pointing to 12 o’clock on the tide display at 10 o’clock in the morning, then the high tide will be a slightly later than 12 because the tidal disc within the tide display will have moved in the two-hour timeframe.

When you take ownership of your Portugieser Yacht Club Moon & Tide, you will need to calibrate the display using tide tables for your specific location and it will remain accurate to within 10 minutes in 100 years.

At the 12 o’clock position you’ll find another sub-dial, this time to indicate the double moon phase, but now also shows strong spring and neap (weak) tides, which allows the wearer to understand the strength of the current tides.

IWC has opted for a blue and gold colour scheme for the Yacht Club Moon & Tide: 18-carat 5N gold case – which is slightly larger than previous Yacht Club models at 44.6mm – with blue dial, gold-plated hands and 18-carat 5N gold appliques. The case is attached to a blue rubber strap with textile inlay.

Running the whole show is IWC’s in-house 82835 calibre, which not only features Pellaton winding but a 60-hour power reserve as well. As with other models in the Portugieser family, you can gaze upon its beauty via the see-through sapphire-glass back.

It’s a stunning looking timepiece and one that slots perfectly into the wider Portugieser series. Pricing and availability have yet to be confirmed.

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