Into The Pacific With The Blancpain × Swatch Scuba Fifty Fathoms Ocean Of Storms

The Scuba Fifty Fathoms Ocean of Storms is a wonderful holiday watch. Providing a mechanical caliber and the wearing experience of a Blancpain, this Swatch is a whole lot of fun. It’s good that this plasticky watch has a decent level of waterproofness too. Sydney’s spring has been a tempestuous affair to say the least. What should have been a gentle transition into warmer months has instead delivered a string of unpredictable squalls, cold southerlies, and sharp breaks of sun that have often been far too short.

That unpredictable weather is exactly the context in which I strapped the Blancpain × Swatch Scuba Fifty Fathoms Ocean of Storms to my wrist. Surely, a playful Bioceramic Swatch shouldn’t be at home in rough conditions, but this one proved its namesake well. In fact, I have grown to quite like this option from Swatch, and that came as a surprise to me!

The Scuba Fifty Fathoms: An interesting collaboration 

When Swatch and Blancpain unveiled the Scuba Fifty Fathoms, the watch world raised its collective eyebrows. It was inevitable, perhaps, after the hype of the MoonSwatch, but still, the Fifty Fathoms is not the Speedmaster. It is, however, one of the original dive watches (launched in 1953) and a model line that modern Blancpain has guarded carefully. I think we can all agree that making the Speedmaster and the Fifty Fathoms more accessible to customers via Swatch has been a stroke of genius. The Speedmaster, in particular, has had a renaissance. The MoonSwatch has proved immensely popular as well.

The Ocean of Storms model is one of the more restrained references in the Scuba Fifty Fathoms line. Still, it offers the same 42.3mm diameter, 14.4mm thickness, and 48mm lug-to-lug as its more brightly colored brothers. The case is made from Swatch’s proprietary Bioceramic, which is part ceramic powder and part biosourced material. It feels like plastic on the wrist, with a similar weight and texture. The dial is black, clean, and legible, paired with a unidirectional rotating bezel and a sturdy NATO-style strap (note: I quickly swapped the strap for something else, as I found it uncomfortable and very stiff). Powering the watch is Swatch’s Sistem51 automatic movement, with a 90-hour power reserve. The watch is rated water resistant to 91 meters, a nod to Blancpain’s original “fifty fathoms.”

Springtime mood swings

Spring diving in Sydney is rarely relaxed, to be fair. One week, you get the glassy, almost lake-like surfaces and water clarity that feels like the Mediterranean; the next, the swell turns rough, and visibility shrinks. Thankfully, the conditions, though rough, were decent. On the morning of my dive, the swell was running at just under 1.5 meters, with a stiff offshore wind. Though not ideal for comfort, it was workable for a controlled freedive.

Performance where it matters

The first shock when slipping beneath the Pacific is always the temperature. The chill sets in quickly in spring. As I dived to no deeper than around five meters, I glanced at the dial. Legibility is excellent. The bezel, with its acrylic-like insert, turned with reassuring clicks, though not the sharp, metallic ratchet of a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, Tudor Black Bay, Rolex Sea-Dweller 16600, or something of that ilk. But of course, those are watches many times the price of this Swatch.

The watch felt up to the task of actually taking it in the ocean and in the rough and tumble of the surf. It feels much better made than the MoonSwatch, for example. Water resistance? Absolutely sufficient. At no point did I feel I was tempting fate. That said, the experience highlighted what the Scuba Fifty Fathoms isn’t. It isn’t a professional dive instrument. The bezel action, while functional, lacks the precision of tool-grade divers. The Bioceramic case, while handsome in black, doesn’t shrug off knocks like stainless steel. In short, it doesn’t feel like it would withstand a big knock like a steel watch would.

A whole lot of fun

But none of that takes away from the sheer fun of the thing. At around 42mm wide, it wears large but not uncomfortably so. The case, though chunky on paper, is surprisingly light in practice because of the material used. From a short distance, it doesn’t look like plastic. It looks more like a ceramic, almost professional. In a sense, I’d say it’s one of the least playful options in the Swatch Scuba Fifty Fathoms line, and I quite like it for that reason. No, I don’t see the Scuba Fifty Fathoms Ocean of Storms as a replacement for a professional dive watch, but that was never what it aimed to be, either.

What the Blancpain × Swatch Fifty Fathoms line provides is a wonderfully attainable entry point to an iconic design language. It definitely made me realize that if I’d owned a normal Fifty Fathoms, the size would simply not suit my wrist. The Blancpain is too chunky, big, and brash for my tastes to be a daily wearer.

Concluding thoughts

Taking the Scuba Fifty Fathoms Ocean of Storms into the Pacific was a whole lot of fun. At the end of the day, isn’t that what the hobby should be about? I could really see this as a fun holiday watch. This option from Swatch is intriguing because it looks rather serious, particularly next to its collection mates in the Swatch Scuba Fifty Fathoms lines. The Ocean of Storms kind of plays a visual trick on you, convincing you that it’s a pro-spec diver made of ceramic. The good quality and potency of the lume also surprised me.

Handling it creates a different impression. It’s incredibly light (almost uncomfortably so), but the bezel clicks well, and I feel the watch is of decent quality, particularly for the €400 / £350 / US$420 / A$670 asking price. The Ocean of Storms surprised me with how much I grew to like it.

But what do you think, Fratelli? I know this hasn’t been as popular as the MoonSwatch, but are you interested in this collaboration, or would you give it a pass? Let me know which and why in the comments.