British Virgin IslandsNIVREL watch found working after years in the ocean
Once again a diver found a NIVREL watch on the sea ground. Because it was still working, Mr. Christopher Juredin decided to send it back to NIVREL – in order to find the real owner. Christopher Juredin is a professional diver from the British Virgin Islands. He owns a commercial diving company and scuba diving operations and usually dives in the harbours around the Caribbean. As a commercial diver, he also enjoys looking for lost objects and often finds many things from historic rum bottles to vessel propellers.
One day late in the year 2008 he was working under a cruise ship doing ship husbandry. He was looking for a propeller and systematically worked back and forth on a rope spool in 65 feet of wa-ter around 10 foot visibility and with around 300 feet of search line. The bottom was thick mud and turtle grass and there was lots of traffic from the charter companies’ vessels overhead. Looking at the sea ground, he noticed a watch strap sticking out of the mud. He pulled it out and had a NIVREL automatic alarm watch in his hands. His first thought was to leave it behind as he did not see it move, however he decided to keep it. When he surfaced back on the boat he wiped it off and it started to work. It worked periodically for a couple of days, then stopped.
Mr. Juredin decided to send the watch to the NIVREL headquarters in Germany, asking if NIVREL could find the owner or fix it. He had the strong feeling that the owner may want it back, given the rarity of finding it in such conditions. Christopher thought that the owner may have been on a sailing yacht and it caught on the railing and came undone or fell off when returning or going on holiday as it was in the vessel channel.
When the watch arrived in Germany, the drying salt had finally brought some damage to the watch, especially to the movement. Nevertheless, everybody at NIVREL was quite amazed of the good condition, given the fact that the watch was down at the sea ground for quite a while and it only was tested to a water resistance of 5 ATM.
NIVREL was able to trace the original owner of the watch, a gentleman from Germany and of-fered to send him the watch – together with the story. Also, Christopher Juredins effort to find the original owner was honoured by NIVREL. Considering that a professional diver like Christopher would appreciate a professional diving tool, a NIVREL Deep Sea was handed over as a present. The automatic diving watch with a water-resistany of 100 ATM received a special appreciation engraving for Christopher before it made its way to the British Virgin Islands.