Blancpain recently announced their latest limited edition timepiece – The Blancpain Ocean Commitment II (BOC II) for short, or the ‘Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Flyback Chronograph Blancpain Ocean Commitment II’ for really long.
Photo by Blancpain
The BOC II features a couple of technical innovations for Blancpain. This is the first watch to feature an all blue ceramic case, bezel, pushers, and crown. Apparently mixing various colors into ceramics without weakening them is quite the technical challenge. Blancpain has been working on the all blue case for several years, and only just now has got the technique down to their liking.
Two different manufacturing processes had to be used for various parts and getting the color to match between the processes was the main challenge. With a watch of this price there could be no color difference between the case and crown, or the pushers and bezel.
Photo by Blancpain
The other innovation is Blancpain’s caliber F385 movement. Beating 36,000 times an hour it allows the chronograph to be accurate down to 1/10’s of a second. The flyback movement allows resetting the chronograph with a single button push, instead of the 3 separate pushes needed for a standard chronograph.
Photo by Blancpain
Like the previous Ocean Commitment, for each piece sold Blancpain will donate €1,000 ($1,100) to ocean-related scientific expeditions. With the limited run of 250 watches, this will total €250,000 ($275,000).
The Ocean Commitment program is probably the coolest thing Blancpain’s doing at the moment. Releasing new limited edition watches every year with a significant chunk of the purchase price going towards scientific endeavors is something I can get behind.
You can read more about the BOC II on Blancpain’s website.
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