Sailing away with the Tavolara Vintage from Spinnaker

I like orange, and I like green. For a nice beater to wear about town or woods, the Spinnaker Tavolara Vintage SP-5037 fits the bill and is nice to look at to boot.

The Spinnaker Tavolara SP-5037 starts with a stainless steel case, whose sides are not polished at all, and caps it with a polished smooth bezel. It’s equipped with two crowns, one to operate an internal rotating bezel insert, and the other to set the time and date. The watch is nothing if not colorful: the dial and rotating ring are green. The hour hand is silver. The minute had is a giant orange arrow, and the seconds hand is blue. The strap is a light brown padded, perforated water-resistant leather.

Look at that beautiful blue rotor… mmm…

Look at that height!

The back of the watch has a display window, showing off the Miyota automatic movement, equipped with a blue Spinnaker-signed rotor. The watch sits tall on the wrist, with the crystal riding way above the bezel, but all in all, it feels like a very classic watch, one that could have been made decades ago.

It’s exceedingly comfortably and wears small for a 42mm, feeling much more like a 40mm on my wrist. If you’re partial to vintage sized timepieces, this one makes a lot of sense. The leather and NATO strap that it comes with are both very decent, and I didn’t feel compelled to upgrade the strap as I have for other watches.

Where’d the hands go?

I need to speak about the lume. On all of the Spinnaker watches we’ve reviewed so far, the lume has been uniformly weak, to the point of being a disappointment. Here, the lume on the dial is excellent. The lume on the hands is woefully bad. I wish Spinnaker would consider applying as much lume as they can to the dial and hands, and then go back, and apply some more. It could have been such a nice watch, if they’d only had enough lume to outshine a flashlight or torch. http://www.spinnaker-watches.com/collections/tavolara/products/sp-5037-03-automatic-mens-vintage-watch

Bright indices, dim hands

Watch Overview

Brand & Model: Spinnaker Tavolara Vintage SP-5037-03
Price: pricing starts at $390

Who we think it might be for: You like a vintage watch with a bit of color, and it doesn’t have to be a big chunky diver.
Would I buy one for myself based on what I’ve seen?: I really did like it. It was a comfortable wear, not dressy, but not a chunk of steel.
If I could make one design suggestion, it would be: Apply more lume