TAG Heuer revives its Carrera Skipper this week, four decades after the colorful regatta countdown timer disappeared from the watchmaker’s line-up.

Returning as a 39mm steel watch, the new TAG Heuer Carrera Skipper retains its brightly colored dress, sporting a circular-brushed blue primary dial with sub-dials in contrasting teal, green and orange.

The new model also features the Carrera’s new bezel-free ‘glassbox’ design with a broader sapphire crystal and curved flange dial, a combination that extends the viewing angle for the dial.

The new Skipper also retains many of the design features that marked the original, including large triangle-shaped markers at five-minute intervals around the outer curved flange, a bright orange central seconds hand and the Skipper name emblazoned at the base of the 12-hour counter. The new model adds a date to the dial.

New Series

The launch is just the start of a maritime revival for the watchmaker. TAG Heuer says it plans to create a new series of nautical watches led by the revived Carrera Skipper. The series will “mark TAG Heuer’s return to the world of yachts and yachting,” according to the watchmaker.

TAG Heuer’s involvement in yacht racing starts in the 1940s, but the Skipper’s history commenced after the 1967 America’s Cup. That’s when Jack Heuer provided with winning yacht, the Intrepid, with a set of hand-held yachting stop watches and equipped her crew with Aquastar wrist watches featuring a customized countdown timer made of a red and white disc that rotated behind a series of five holes.

To celebrate that win, Heuer created the Skipper chronograph in 1968 with a 30-minute subdial that was adapted to count-down the fifteen-minute regatta ‘pre-start’ in three, five-minute segments. Later versions of the Skipper used the Autavia case, according to TAG Heuer, though the very first examples were based on the Carrera chronograph.

TAG Heuer is powering the new Carrera Skipper with its TH20-06 movement that boasts bi-directional winding and an impressive 80-hour power reserve.

Price: $6,750.

Specifications: TAG Heuer Carrera Skipper 

(CBS2213.FN6002) 

Movement: Caliber TH20-06 automatic displaying hours, minutes, seconds, date, chronograph 

Dial: Blue circular brushed. Blue flange with 60 second / minute scale 3 counters: 

 – 3 o’clock: green, orange & teal color lacquered 15-minute count-down
indicator; rhodium plated polished hand
–  6 o’clock: blue permanent second indicator; rhodium plated polished hand
–  9 o’clock: teal color lacquered hour chronograph counter; SKIPPER printed;
rhodium plated polished hand.

Rhodium-plated facetted, polished applied indexes, rhodium-plated facetted, polished hour and minute hands with white SuperLumiNova and orange lacquered triangle-shaped tip. Orange lacquered central hand 6 o’clock angled date

Case: 39mm by 13.9mm fine brushed and polished steel, bezel free construction, ‘glassbox’ domed sapphire crystal with double anti-reflective treatment. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Bracelet: Blue fabric strap with polished steel folding clasp with double safety pushbuttons

Price: $6,750.