Week on the wrist with the Seiko SPB213. Part 1: Preparation for Adventure

A diver’s watch, for camping of course.

I’m not a scuba diver, but if there is one darned-if-this-isn’t-handy use for a traditional diver’s watch that isn’t diving, it’s camping. I was raised in a camping family. My dad had a 1969 Ford Bronco that our family of five used to pile into for camping trips and weekend adventure. I still have the Omega that Dad wore on those trips, it being his only watch. The simplicity of car- and canoe-based camping and travel are still important to me and my family, so when we planned our summer camping trip this year, I decided it would be fun to splash out on a new dive watch. I needed something like the Precista PRS-82 or the Marathon MSAR that used to be my go-to camping watches. My budget was limited; I wanted a sapphire crystal, fully graduated bezel, and a 40-ish mm case. But I was otherwise open to considering just about any watch from any brand.

Precista PRS-82 (L) and Marathon MSAR (R). Simple, well-designed tools.

I love my Tudor Black Bay Steel, but I’m thinking of trading it on a blue-dialed Black Bay Fifty-Eight, so I didn’t want to take any risks with it. But my AD is having trouble finding a blue Fifty-Eight, and they’re a little pricier than I was thinking about for this watch anyway. I’d also love an Oris Diver’s Sixty-Five, but I’ve been waiting for Oris to put their new caliber 400 into it. When earlier this year they announced a new caliber 400 diver, I had those oh-boy-here’s-my-next-watch thoughts, but my hopes were dashed when they put it into the Aquis, a watch I’ve never been nuts about. So I finally landed on the brilliant silver-dialed SPB213 from Seiko, one of several recent re-issues of their famous 62MAS. Hallowed be its name.

The Black Bay Steel (L) and the Black Bay Fifty-Eight (R).

I am not a Seiko fanatic, but I do like variety in my small collection, and I hadn’t owned a Seiko in quite a few years. The Seiko value proposition is considerable, and if you’ve read any of my recent posts, you’ll know that vintage watch ownership is not what I am about these days. Since I love classic design, however, I consider myself lucky to be living in the golden age of reimagined classic watches. Seems like Hamilton, Longines, Seiko, Zenith, CWC, and many other watch companies are just killing it with their revisits to catalogs past. But before I describe my experience with the SPB213, I have to give you some background on how I wanted to use it.

Relaxing on a summer evening with the Seiko SPB213.

Vintage 4WD meets real life.

Way back in 2008, in my Marathon GSAR days, I was putting the finishing touches on a body-off, frame-up restoration of my 1964 Series IIA 88-inch Land Rover. The project was the realization of a bucket list dream, and it had been a long four years’ worth of work. The ultimate goal had been to take the Land Rover on some sort of old school epic adventure like the Bronco trips of my youth. It took another year to get the Rover ready, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside a SIIA 88” Land Rover, but “spacious” is not a word that any reasonable person would associate with Land Rover’s short wheelbase utility model. We were a family of three, plus dogs and canoe, and I knew the Rover would just be too tight for the kind of multi-week trip I had in mind.

Packing for our epic adventure, and already I had a stowaway.

I had been a subscriber to Land Rover Owner International since the mid-90’s, and it was in the pages of that magazine that I had first seen the beautiful rooftop tents from the Italian manufacturer, AutoHome. They weren’t available in the US at that time, so for our trip we’d be camping the way we always camped, in a ground tent. But I tucked away the knowledge of AutoHome in some corner of my mind, and it was a frequent subject of daydreams from then on.

A Sherpa joins the family.

For our newly restored Land Rover’s first major outing, we decided to explore one of our favorite places in the world, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. To solve the problem of limited Land Rover space on our adventure, I decided that a small trailer would be the way to go. I commissioned an off-road-capable Sherpa model from the now defunct Outlander Trailer company, replete with a bronze green and limestone paint scheme to match the Rover. I even had the Sherpa made with Land Rover hubs so that I could run Land Rover wheels on it, thus eliminating the need for a separate spare tire. Naturally.

Scenes from our 2009 Rover-powered Sherpa trip to the Upper Peninsula.

Our trip was an amazing success, but its full telling is for another time. The Sherpa came back from that trip and entered duty as a utility trailer, and my Land Rover, which I’ve owned for 25 years now, enjoys retirement as a canoe spotting vehicle at the cottage. People ask me what it’s like owning such a vehicle for so long, and I often compare it to having an old family dog that never dies. Even if you sometimes wish it would. Not that I do. Today anyway.

Retirement duty for an old Rover.

Now, in 2021, we find ourselves in an empty nest daydreaming about our own retirement in the not-too-distant future. We still love car-based primitive camping and travel (what people today seem to refer to as “overlanding”), but we have a different pair of dogs and much less patience for the discomfort of ground-tenting and traveling any real distance in a Series Land Rover. So, even though it seemed like anathema to this old Generation Jones, dyed-in-the-wool, British automotive enthusiast, I found myself contemplating Jeep ownership. This is about as likely as the Pope considering the merits of the Netherlands Reformed Church. I kid you not.

A Jeep Thing.

I like to keep my friends guessing, so when I looked into the latest model of Jeep Wrangler you can imagine it was surprisingly unsurprising. I confirmed what I already knew about it — a body-on-frame, short wheelbase, old school 4WD with its visible automotive DNA going back to WWII. But, what I didn’t expect to find was a comfortable and reasonable interior, a smooth and powerful V6 engine with a reputation for reliability, LED lighting, heated seats and extremities, a perky and interesting driving personality, and modern amenities like Apple CarPlay. When I saw that Jeep offered the Wrangler in a color almost indistinguishable from my beloved Land Rover’s bronze green, I prayed for forgiveness from the Land Rover gods and joined the Jeep flock. I figured this was a safe bet, since if you go back far enough (1948), they’re really cousins anyway.

Family resemblance.

With the vehicle variable of our empty nest pre-retirement camping equation settled, I returned to another daydream of the last few years, that classic mid-20th-century design icon, the teardrop camper. By far my favorite manufacturer is Vintage Overland, a family-run Colorado-based company that really seems to understand the teardrop zeitgeist. But, although they are robust, comfortable, and extremely cool, they are a little spendy for something I’d use a few weeks out of the year. When I thought about living with one, I kept coming back to the fact that when you’re not actually using your camper, you have to find a place to store it while it depreciates and gathers literal dust. So I blew the figurative dust off the AutoHome idea, which by now was being distributed and sold in the USA.

You know how it is when you get that this-is-definitely-my-next-watch vision? Well, the Sherpa trailer lives in my small backyard, in a corner where I let nature take its course. One day a couple years ago while having a beer on the deck and pondering the den my dogs had dug under it, I had the idea of mounting a rooftop tent to it and transforming it into a DIY mini-camper. When not being used for travel and adventure, the tent could come off and the Sherpa could still be used as a utility trailer. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the concept, so I began the project of modifying it to accept a rooftop tent.

Clockwise from upper left: At the fabrication shop, being custom-fitted with stainless steel sides and crossbars. Disassembled and sandblasted. Epoxy primer coated. Custom Rover Haven leather chain guards on tailgate.

The Series IIA Land Rover hubs should probably go, it could use a new coat of paint and electrical renewal, and I’d want to enclose it for security while traveling. But other than those straight forward modifications, my mental design exercise didn’t come up with any show-stopping obstacles, and it seemed easy compared to restoring an old Land Rover.

Back from the fabrication shop, but not yet re-painted. With its stainless steel sides, tailgate, and custom crossbars, the Sherpa will carry any rooftop tent. AutoHome can be seen lurking in the background.

Sherpa + AutoHome.

In May we took delivery of an AutoHome tent that I can now carry on the Sherpa, the open body of which I enclosed with perforated stainless steel sheet and a tailgate. It’s painted to match the Jeep and runs Jeep hubs to which I mounted Jeep wheels. It is fitted with new LED lighting and a new harness, and the whole thing is easily accommodated by the Jeep Thing’s rather limited towing capacity of 2,000 lbs.

Home from the paint shop and being wired with a new harness and LED lights.

We planned a two-week adventure in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula, a reprise of the original 2009 Land Rover trip that now lives in family lore, packed all our camping gear into totes that would fit in the secure area under the AutoHome, turned on our out-of-office replies, and took off. And here you thought this was going to be a watch review, but now you know why I wanted a special dive watch for this trip.

The Sherpa with all new harness and LED lighting.

With that background, I’ll conclude Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll let you know how the Seiko SPB213 fared on our travels, and I might even stack it up against the Rover Haven One Watch criteria, something I haven’t done in a while. This watch is beautifully inspired by Seiko’s original dive watch, the now-classic and very collectible 62MAS, hallowed be its name. If you aren’t familiar with it, there’s a great primer on the 62MAS over on Fratello, and the bonus is that it’s written by a (former) fellow Michigander, Michael Stockton.

Better in every way. The new SPB213.

Until next time.