Ulysse Nardin will be the official timekeeper of the 2020 Vendée Globe, the world’s most challenging sailing race. The partnership dovetails neatly with the watchmakers history. Founded in 1846 as a manufacture of complex pocket watches and chronometers for navigation, its marine chronometers are still prized today by collectors around the world.
The Vendée Globe is the only single-handed non-stop yacht race around the world without assistance. The race begins and ends in Les Sables d’Olonne, a seaside town in the Vendée region of Western France. With icy condition, mountainous waves and howling gales the race is often referred to as the Everest of the Seas – it is the ultimate test of human endurance in open ocean racing.
Inspired by the sailors who take on this daunting challenge, Ulysse Nardin created the Vendée Globe Collection featuring the limited edition Diver X Cape Horn and Diver X Nemo Point. The divers are named for points of the course, which takes the monohull yachts on a 40,075 km north-south trajectory around the the Earth. Many of the sailors cross Nemo Point during their circumnavigation. Named after author Jules Verne’s seafaring captain, the Nemo Point is a position in the South Pacific off the coast of Chile that lies literally in the middle of nowhere. Closer to the International Space Station than to solid land, Point Nemo is located at 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, the point in the ocean that is farthest from land. Those GPS coordinates along with the route of the Vendée Globe are engraved on the back of each Ulysse Nardin Diver X Nemo Point watch.
Housed in a durable 44 mm titanium case that is water-resistant up to 30 m, an anti-reflective sapphire crystal and a two-tone blue and red tactical-strength nylon strap, the Diver X Nemo Point is engineered to withstand the extreme conditions of the Vendée Globe. Each case is also individually numbered on the side as part of a limited edition of 300 timepieces.
For the month of June, the Ulysse Nardin Diver X Nemo Point ($11,900.00) is available online exclusively in the United States and United Kingdom to celebrate the launch of Ulysse Nardin’s new e-commerce site.
