Vestal Men's The Brig Watch

I get compliments on this watch all the time. People always want to know "what does it do?!" (I always say "It tells time" ;))ANYWAY-- just a word of caution... when I ordered it, the one that arrived was dead. So I called Vestal up (great customer service). They told me it had a warranty (you have to go through vestal not through amazon, fyi). They send me two accidentally because they spelled my name wrong or something and lost track of my order. I kept one of the ones I received and sent back the two (one being my broken one). Less than two months later the new one started giving me problems both in and out of the water (blinking low battery for a few days then going back to normal, then blinking low battery sometimes not showing the tide etc). After going through the rig-amoral again with Vestal I finally got my old watch back fixed somehow and inspected (they provide the inspection sheet). Anyhow- for a surf watch it seems this particular Vestal doesn't uphold the standards of the Vestal surf watch Brand. I know Vestal is known to make great surf watches but I'm thinking this one may be defective or something.

Awesome tide display easily shows the next high and low tides. The tide height measure is pretty accurate down to the foot almost. Its a really good quality display and I'm really happy with it. The only bad thing is the pink very rich when you first get the watch. After 2 months of daily use the pink has started fading to this nasty looking inconsistent pink color where there will be dark pinks and pale almost bleached looking pinks. I'd give this watch 5 stars if it weren't for the pink color fading so quickly. This is the first Vestal watch I've bought and I was sort of skeptical about the purchase at first because I'd never heard of that brand before but I'm highly impressed by the quality for the price. My next tide watch will most definitely be this brand just in a different color. I'll just go with a black band next time so the colors won't fade so quickly.

I've owned the Vestal surf watch for about 1 month. My intended purpose is to use as a tidal monitor for saltwater fishing, no surfing planned at this time. After evaluating several tide watches I decided to take a chance on this one based on price and good reviews, as I expected to be pretty rough on it. The "square" style has really grown on me, it's very different (and quite efficient - more below). I've not used the "heat" or "train" functions, so I cannot comment on them.Display: Vestal really achieved a fantastic balance of size and style with this one in my opinion. I tried on other tide watches that had smaller displays or the "ana-digi clock + tide graph" (Casio, Rip Curl, Reactor). After using the Vestal in its intended environment, I understand how useless trying to read tide info would've been on a smaller display or one primarily dedicated to "time". I've really come to appreciate the size balance of tide info vs. time info on this watch. You can understand everything going on in one quick glance - this is truly a tide-watch. The "light on black" display gives very good contrast in bright sun. The blue light is a nice touch and easy on the eyes.Tide Function: Decent amount of data included for my purposes and location, keeping in mind that it is designed for surfers. Tide functions are well thought out - graph is extremely useful. You can see 4 hours ago, "now", 12 hours into the future at once on the graph. Not only can you see "high / low", but also how much tidal displacement in feet - very good info for both fishing and surfing. Best of all - this is available at all times on the "time" and "tide" screens. Future tide lets you see past & future high / low times. You get to set 2 locations as your primaries - nice because in my area we have two distinct tidal periods within a 60 mile coastal region.Construction: This watch is built tough - I primarily fish offshore and so far it is holding up extremely well. The band is quite comfortable, soft enough not to chafe but also holds secure and does not twist around the wrist. No damage yet - it's made 3 all day trips (cast-netting bait, gaffing fish, pulling anchor). Yes, this is not a lifetime of abuse but so far it does what it says.Cons: I did not really get much out of the user manual - it took a bit of work to figure out how to program my custom locations. Really - this is my only gripe so far.The only recommendation I would make to Vestal is to consider the sportfishing market. Imagine the customers that would flock to this product if you included more traditional US fishing locations in your tide tables! Digital storage is extremely cheap - there would be virtually no cost to include more locations (please start with NE gulf of Mexico). How about a "fishing" model with time / tide / future tide / lunar phase information? 3 year warranty says a lot about Vestal's customer commitment - based on what I've seen so far I don't expect to need to use this, but it is very nice to have.

The makers of surfer's tide watches make functional yet fashionable watches. Vestal is no exception. I like the Army green color scheme and the tide graph display. It's not simply for show. The tide tables for 200 beaches are programmed for the next 20 years. You can see at a glance the tide height (Feet only) for the past 4 hours and the next 12 hours. You can also have a separate tide selection for the second time zone.I rarely use the stopwatch or countdown timer functions,but it comes in handy for others.It's water resistant to 330 ft,which makes it safe for anything from car-washing to diving.While it may vary from watch to watch,I set the time to an accurate time source and after 21 days, it's off by only four seconds.The only small drawback to note is that the PM and DST indicators on the upper right corner of the screen is in very small type. Not a deal-breaker,but DST has to be set properly for the tide times to be accurate.All in all, I'm happy with it and as far as tide watches go,$95 is a bargain. Just keep an eye on the price.

After about 4 weeks of use while surfing, the watch began automatically resetting the time, date and beach every day. I returned it to Vestal through their Warranty program, and it was repaired and returned to me promptly (about ten days). It seems the battery provided was at the end of its useful life. After a few days, it started resetting itself again. This time Vestal (excellent customer service) sent me a pre-printed shipping to use to return the watch to Vestal, then they sent me a new watch. It took about 24 hours for the watch to start resetting itself.UPDATE: After emailing Vestal, they immediacy responded and explained that they had some problems with the particular color of this style (bad production lot?) I bought. They sent me a different color (same model), and it seems to work just fine.