Interview: The Singer Reimagined Dive Track With Marco Borraccino

At 15, I went to Fiji on a family holiday. It was an awkward time in my life.

I was too old to hang out at the resort kids' club and too young to go off alone and explore. I was in limbo, stuck in paradise like an elephant on a surfboard. I swam in the pool one day, slept under a coconut palm the next, and by the time the sun rose on the third, I was bored out of my brains. There’s only so much floating around drinking mocktails one can handle; I was eager to find something more interesting to do.

One afternoon, desperate to amuse myself, I went for a walk down to the wharf. As I sat with my feet dangling over the edge, a dive boat was being unloaded after a day on the water. Its passengers were peeling off their black wetsuits to reveal tired yet satisfied-looking bodies. Tanks, regulators and fins were all being hosed off, and the late afternoon sun was blinding as it bounced off the wet deck of the boat. ‘They look happy, ’ I thought to myself, ‘maybe I’ll give that a try. ’

The next day, I was bouncing rhythmically on that very same boat, heading out to an island in the middle of the Pacific. My instructor was Patric, a seven-foot-tall Fijian man with a smile that went on for miles. Over the next week, we will be in the water in the morning and in parallel hammocks in the afternoon, studying dive theory while swaying back and forth in the sun. It was an absolute dream.

Diving was my thing, and I took to it quickly. Patrick said to me at the end of our last day, “You’re born to dive, Mitch, just like me”. He was an absolute legend.

Unfortunately, after that trip, I never donned the wetsuit and regulator again. I have, however, been obsessed with dive watches ever since. Knowing the science behind diving and the body has helped me sell countless Submariners in my time; I was among the very few at the AD that actually knew what a decompression stop was.

Almost no one uses a dive watch as a practical tool any more; at most, it’s a backup for the digital dive computer. It’s a shame, really. I’ve always been fascinated by the effort put into designing modern dive watches. Their technology and philosophy have pushed the industry forward like no other category, yet they are mostly obsolete. Cool is still cool, I guess.

When it comes to the peak of dive watch innovation, the Singer Dive Track is a watch that sits at the top of the tree. It's the watch that the industry would have made if design hadn't stopped in the 1950s. A Submariner is great, but what if you wanted something more?

I spoke to Marco Borraccino from Singer Reimagined about how and why he created this beast of a watch. His insights are illuminating, logical and creative. He's one seriously talented designer, and the Dive Track is one seriously capable watch.

If you haven’t read the first story about the founding and philosophy of Singer Reimagined, it's best to do that first. Context is important!

The Singer Reimagined Dive Track With Marco Borraccino

MB: The Dive Track feels very different from the rest of the collection, and I’d love to talk to you about the genesis of this watch and what your thought process was when designing it.

I always like to find out whether the designer of the watch would actually use it for its intended purpose. I was in Switzerland last year and met with Rémy from Krayon—an incredible guy. He loves skin diving. That’s why he invented the sunrise–sunset indicator on the Anywhere—so he could know exactly when the sun would rise or set, because that’s when the fish are more active.

I love that kind of real, practical motivation behind watch design. Was it a similar thought process with the Dive Track?

Marco Borraccino: The first drawing of the Dive Track actually came the same day as the Track 1. So, before the creation of the brand. When I realised the potential of this central chronograph, I started to explore the applications it could have.

But it took five, maybe six years to fine-tune the design. I really wanted to make this watch something unique, especially in terms of functionality.

I’ve done some diving. I’m not a professional diver, but I’ve been diving a few times. I also went through deep studies and had discussions with divers to really understand their needs. And I realised quite quickly that none of the existing diving watches were actually meant to be used for diving. Because diving isn’t just the moment you get into the water. Diving happens before, during, and after the dive.

That’s where the idea of combining a central chronograph with a display of the three moments of a diving session came from.

I’ll cut in here to explain why it's necessary to ‘decompress’ after a dive. The air in a dive tank comprises a mixture of 79% nitrogen and 29% oxygen. This is similar to the air we breathe on the surface, and when we are at depth, the nitrogen is absorbed into the bloodstream. If a diver were to ascend too quickly, the nitrogen can form bubbles in the bloodstream. This is called decompression sickness or ‘The Bends’. After a dive, you must be on the surface for a predetermined amount of time to allow this nitrogen to dissolve safely out of the blood so you can dive again. Altitude and pressure changes when flying can also cause issues if you haven’t fully decompressed. This will make the Dive Track’s main functions easier to understand.

MB: So, you have the wait time between two dives. You have the actual dive zone—that’s the moment where you’re free to dive. And then again, a wait zone afterwards. And this cycle repeats.

So it’s not so much about the decompression time, but about the set amount of time you have to wait until you can dive again?

Marco: Exactly. Now, if you look at the centre, you have the small 24-hour counter. That’s the part of the watch you’d use after your dive—between two dives, or before jumping on a flight.

So you have the “chill zone,” which is between zero and six hours. That’s your surface interval between dives. It varies depending on the depth, length, and frequency of your diving sessions.

Then, from six to eighteen hours, you have the dive zone—you’re free to dive because your body is ready.

And if that was your last dive and you need to catch a flight, then you know you need to wait between eighteen and twenty-four hours to allow your body to recover.

CHILL (0-6h): This zone helps you determine the necessary surface interval before your next dive based on factors such as previous dive duration, depth, and frequency.

DIVE (6h-18h): Indicates when you can dive again after fulfilling the required surface interval.

FLY (18h-24h): Post-dive, this area reminds you of the safe window before flying to avoid health risks like pulmonary embolism. It's essential to wait at least 18 hours after your last dive before flying, as per PADI guidelines.

All of these things were never taken into consideration in any other watch before. It was always just about decompression stops. Like the use of a unidirectional bezel—you can do it that way, sure. But when you use a turning bezel on a traditional diving watch, you can use it once. And if you use it a second time, you lose the information from the first. With this watch, the central chronograph dial keeps track of the full length of your diving session.

So you’re able to use the bezel to calculate the time you spend at maximum depth, the time, and then decompression time, as many times as you need. And in the end, when you get out of the water, the watch tells you how long you’ve stayed in the water.

MB: What I really love about the central chronograph is that there’s so much information, but it’s still so clean and easy to read. There’s very little clutter on the dial.

Marco: The thing is, you can make it messy. You can make it like a Richard Mille, and then you won’t be able to use it. Or you can make it simple, because you want it to be usable. That’s the difference in philosophy. And there’s this nice extra feature—the time indication under the bezel.

That’s something that really makes the watch. All the complexity of a diving watch, being water-resistant to 300 meters, sits in this rotating disc inside the watch. Because you’ve got so much sapphire crystal, making it watertight is incredibly difficult.

So that’s where all the engineering power—and the engineering budget—went. This watch is extremely complicated.

That’s the advantage of being a designer at the helm of the company. I approach every single project like it’s a blank page.

When the CEO of a company comes from the market, they approach development and product launch based on what the market seems to want. And it’s usually too late. When the CEO is a marketeer, they might make something that makes the brand desirable—but it only lasts one season.

When you design something from scratch, you design it with a purpose. I know this watch won’t sell in the thousands. It wasn’t meant to.

For me, it’s really a demonstration of the philosophy of the brand. We are Singer. We are able to do this because we approach projects in a way that nobody else does.

MB: I love that. It reminds me of something Steve Jobs said—“People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Marco: I think it’s a good analogy.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Marco; he’s so sincere and has a purity about him that is very refreshing. That’s how I see his watches, too. The Dive Track isn’t for everyone. What it is, however, is an idea pushed to the extreme. It’s one designer’s ambition to blow the doors off convention and build a watch that is truly no compromise. Marco has actually thought about how a dive watch should be used and has taken full advantage of the technological constraints of mechanical watchmaking. Singer Reimagined is where innovation lives.

Cya in the next one. X