TRIED & TESTED
Sea and the China Sea, the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean during his sub-aqua adventures. What is the appeal of diving for him? “It’s most like experiencing an impression of flying as you are moving in three dimensions. No longer are you fixed to the ground.” A resident of Paris, Nicolas’ day job is as an engineer specialising in modifying and improving construction machines, so he appreciated a well-constructed diver’s watch. His blog photos dwell over the details of his Christopher Ward watches with a connoisseur’s eye, but good looks alone are not enough. For Nicolas, a diver’s watch must meet some obvious, but vital, criteria. It must be: waterproof; pressure-proof; easy to read; accurate; and reliable. “You have to count on your watch. It’s not just about watching how long you have been in the water, but it concerns timing your ‘pit stops’ as you resurface. How long you need to rest as you go up depends on what depth you’ve been to, how long you have been down there, whether it is the second dive of the day and so on, but whatever the circumstances, if the need
From a frozen Alpine lake to the warm waters of the Red Sea, Nicolas Thiulleux enjoys putting his 50 or so diver’s watches to the test. The “fat man with skulls on the diving suit”, as he describes himself, is seen in the second photo from the top here.
is for you to wait for three minutes, you must wait for three minutes, not two minutes 50 seconds. I use the bezel on my Christopher Ward watches to time these ascents precisely.” Nicolas usually dives to between 30 metres and 40m, so his CW watches, some of which are guaranteed to be water-resistant to 500m, have passed the pressure test. But to underline the importance of safety in the water he recalls an instance when he went far deeper than normal. “I was fine at a depth of 63m, but at 64m I felt as though I had a train running through my head. That can happen. Everyone has his or her own limit and your body lets you know when you have reached it.”
With a nasty experience like that extremely rare, Nicolas is always looking forward to his next dive. Self-deprecatingly describing himself as “the fat man with skulls on the diving suit”, he will continue to entertain users of the Christopher Ward Forum under his moniker tartine.74. Tartine is his childhood nickname, and is a reference to his love of butter on a slice of baguette (“une tartine” in French), while the 74 is the number given to the départment of Haute-Savoie, the French Alpine province that includes the winter sports centre of Chamonix. Nicolas Thuilleux also wears his various Christopher Ward diver’s watches while on the ski slopes - they are as versatile as he is.
Nicolas Thiulleux’s tried and tested CW Collection
C600 IPB £499.00
C60 TRI SKSI £365.00
C60 GMT SKKO £550.00
christopherward.co.uk
C600 IPK £499.00
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