A few months back ago, a reader asked me whether I had seen a watch like his- a Kirium Digital/ Analogue, but with no Analogue hands. I hadn't- but was intrigued because of the connection to Oracle Racing. The owner of the watch got back in touch today to share the story of the watch and a couple of photos...what a great find!

"As you may know, I'm a professional sailor and work for North Sails, so I have a special affinity for Regatta watches.

For the 2003 America's Cup TAG Heuer was the timing partner to Oracle Racing, for which every sailor received 3 watches including two mechanical watches and a Kirium CL111a digital watch. It was the intention of TAG for the sailors to wear the CL111a while racing, however the sailors refused to wear it because the hands sometimes obstructed the countdown timer.

At this point, TAG produced 30 CL111a's for the sailing team without the H/M/S hands which were worn during racing. I have attached a picture of the one I was able to purchase, along with my colleague's watch who was the mainsheet trimmer.


Interestingly, the serial numbers on all the watches given to the team start with N'XXX0001 and then three digits. Mine is N'XXX001422 and my colleagues is N'XXX001428.

 

Very interesting!
This reminded me of a post about a Kirium without hands that was sold on ebay, of which we laughed a lot...
https://forums.calibre11.com/threads/hilarious-ebay-listing.120748/

… and now it turns out that there really existed a Kirium without hands, limited to 30 pieces!

In any case, the one on ebay was not one of the 30… just a standard Kirium with missing hands!

 

True- although the Oracle watches look to have some sort of cap over the gap where the hands should be...that eBay example just looks like the hands were removed at home!