Pre-Owned LeJour Yachtingraf AS06783

WHY WE LOVE IT

1961, JeanRichard SA — parent company of Aquastar — filed a patent for a unique type of watch. 

Frédéric Robert, the founder of Aquastar as well as one of its chief designers, took a Felsa 4000N  movement and modified it to display a five minute counter, located on a disc on top of the movement. Robert then added a third wheel and connected to a pusher — once depressed, the pusher would reset the seconds hand to zero and start a countdown, visible on the disc.

This watch, the Aquastar Regate, has gone down in horological history as the first regatta timer, and has spawned countless successors — like this watch, the LeJour Yachtingraf.

It seems odd that a sport as esoteric as yachting would have its own watch, but the first regatta timers were created in an age of economic prosperity. Freed from the constraints of post-war rationing, people suddenly had more free time, and the resources to fill it with sports. Aquastar, which was founded by a SCUBA diving enthusiast, was only capitalizing on this sporting boom.

Yema was just another brand that took the idea of a yachting chronograph and ran with it — or, should we say… sailed? They debuted the Yachtingraf debuted in 1966, using a patented design for ‘yachting and underwater use.’ Unlike the Aquastar Regate, the Yachtingraf combined a chronograph with the regatta timer. The Yachtingraf would prove immensely popular, and would be produced in six different versions from 1966 to 1970, when the model was discontinued.

Many of these watches were sold under the brand name LeJour, Yema’s distributor in the United States — including the watch we offer here.

This particular Yachtingraf from the 1970s is housed in a 39mm stainless steel case with an acrylic crystal, an unsigned crown, a bi-directional, rotating countdown bezel. It features matte black tritium dial with applied indices and a matching ‘pencil’ handset, a regatta countdown ‘big eye’ register, and a running seconds register. It’s powered by the Valjoux Calibre 7733 manually-wound chronograph, an affordable and easy-to-service movement used throughout the industry, and comes paired to a black leather strap with an unsigned, stainless steel pin buckle.

The Yachtingraf combines everything we love about 1960s chronographs — a nice size and sharp looks — with robust internals. Although we’d be hard-pressed to find ourselves wearing one in the midst of a yacht race, it’s perfect for casual wear on solid ground.

OVERALL CONDITION

The case is in excellent condition overall showing only faint signs of wear from gentle use. Skeletonized 'exotic' architecture is in equally outstanding condition with luminous rotating time-display discs. Unsigned service crown.