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Albishorn's Marinagraph regatta chrono returns in black and blue fume, 99 pieces each

Two dials for Albishorn's 39mm Marinagraph, 99 pieces of each, built around a patented retrograde regatta counter.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 14 August 2026

Albishorn Marinagraph Classic with a sunburst black dial lying on weathered timber — Image: Albishorn

The Marinagraph's regatta countdown sits at 7 o'clock and runs retrograde: the hand sweeps a ten-minute arc, then drops back to the start. Albishorn holds a patent on it. Two new versions, the Classic and the Classic Fumé, went live on 13 August, and by Monochrome's account sales open the next day.

The premise is a 1958 that never happened. Albishorn builds watches for an imagined past, and this is the regatta chronograph somebody should have made when the America's Cup came back after the war and the 12-Metre yachts turned up. That year Columbia, designed by Olin Stephens and skippered by Briggs Cunningham, saw off the British challenger Sceptre, and did it on an aluminium mast when nobody else was using one. Inventing a watch around that beats reissuing one that already exists, which is most of what the last couple of years have been.

Close-up of the Marinagraph dial showing the retrograde ten-minute regatta scale at seven o’clock — Image: Albishorn

Ten minutes falling away at seven o'clock

A regatta start is a countdown, so what you want is the minutes disappearing in front of you, not a subdial to interpret while the boat is moving and everyone is shouting. The retrograde arc gives you one spot on the dial to read.

There is a second bit of thinking at 3 o'clock, a colour-matched disc that tells you whether the chronograph is actually running. That is a detail you add after watching somebody blow a start.

The Marinagraph Classic Fumé on a red strap beside the Classic on a black strap — Image: Albishorn

The ALB01 A, monopusher and 6.60mm tall

The calibre is Albishorn's own: self-winding, monopusher, 30mm wide and 6.60mm tall, 25 jewels, a 28,800 beat and a typical 64-hour reserve. It drives a central 60-second chronograph counter, stop-seconds and the retrograde regatta function. For an automatic chronograph doing something nobody else is doing, 6.60mm is thin.

The Marinagraph resting on a printed regatta starting-sequence chart — Image: Albishorn

Thirteen millimetres, box crystal included

The case is 316L steel, 39mm across, 47.7mm lug to lug, 20mm between the lugs and 13mm thick with the box sapphire on top. Pull the crystal out of the sum and the case is 12.1mm, and Albishorn publishes both figures. Credit where it is due, because a box crystal is exactly where a millimetre goes missing when a brand would rather nobody measured.

The bezel is bidirectional with Albishorn's own sapphire insert, black, twelve luminous markings, and at 42.7mm across it hangs over the case a touch. The pusher is red anodised aluminium and stands proud of the flank. Water resistance is 100 metres, which is a boat's worth.

The regatta countdown scale and hour markers glowing in the dark — Image: Albishorn

Black sunburst, or blue on the paler dial

The Classic is sunburst black with applied silver indexes filled with white Super-LumiNova, silver hour and minute hands and a red chronograph seconds hand, and it ships on two rubber straps, black and red. The Fumé is the lighter of the pair, swapping the red for blue on the hands and the countdown scale, on white and black rubber.

No index is cut or covered by a subdial. On a chronograph that is rare, and it is why the dial reads like a plain three-hander until the countdown arc registers.

Both are capped at 99 pieces and priced at 3,950 Swiss francs on rubber, taken from Albishorn's own store. Albishorn sells direct, so that francs figure is the one you pay from here too, whatever your card decides on the day.