cazalea[Seiko Moderator]
17137
Navy SEALs and their Watches, Part 2
Apr 21, 2015,11:33 AM
In this series I am providing some background on US Navy SEALs and their Rolex, Tudor and Seiko watches. In this post I'd like to focus on a particular gentleman name Moki Martin, who brought me some Tudors to refresh.
Here we are: Gary, Mrs C, and Moki.
Moki is a local resident who served in the Navy SEALs and other special operations teams. He's earned a chestful of medals, including Bronze Star Medals, Navy Commendation Medals, Combat Action Ribbon, Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Citation, two Meritorious Unit Citations, campaign and marksmanship ribbons and medals, the SEAL “Trident,” a Naval Special Warfare device, U.S. Navy senior parachute jump wings and finally, jump wings from the Republic of Vietnam and the Royal Thailand Navy.
Originally from Maui, Moki enlisted in 1960 and served in some ships before joining the Underwater Demolition teams. You can read the complete story of his activities in and out of the Navy:
In case you don't have time for the whole story, Moki started an event known as the SuperFrog triathlon, which has been running for decades to support the Navy SEAL foundation. Here he's greeting Lance Armstrong, winner of the 2012 race. (Photo by Timothy Carlson, via the web)
Not mentioned in the articles is the fact that Moki is a watch collector. He can't recall ever letting these Tudor watches out of his sight before.
Let's move on -- this is the first one he handed over to be cleaned up.
It's been on the strap since it was new, although he's had a couple little compasses over those years (
"easily smashed"). He didn't want to lose the patina on the watch but he did want it to do better than a loss of 5 minutes per day.
I gave the exterior a careful bath, added a few micro-drops of oil and a tiny adjustment, then polished the crystal.
Here is the watch back in its favorite jungle habitat (in this case, my back yard), with me using my pellet rifle to simulate a combat weapon.
Now here's the kind of provenance everyone loves - the same watch on his wrist in the jungle, back in the day. The photo was taken by a US Navy press photographer.
I asked Gary if he had any photos like this of himself wearing one of his watches, and he replied "
Are you kidding? we took our watches off before operations so we didn't destroy them!"
-----------------------
Moki's second Tudor arrived this week for its inspection.
This watch is on a custom stainless steel bracelet Moki and his pals had made in the Philippines in 1965 and 1967.
You can see the dates scratched in the back of the links. Mounted on the top sides are a parachute logo and diving rig.
Moki wears both of these watches regularly but this Tudor was misbehaving - hard to set, not self-winding, sometimes stopping suddenly.
I have to say there was a bit of debris floating around this watch and bracelet.
But it polished up very nicely without any parts other than gaskets. Inside, it was much the same with one serious exception. Look up at 11 o'clock on the outer edge of the movement. A hole.
Look closely up the stem and you will see a hold-down tab and its screw which had come out and lodged in the stem tube. Luckily it was there and not in the balance wheel. The other tab at 5 o'clock was very loose too. But after they were put back in place and tightened, the watch began running very well.
Here's how it looks on my wrist.
The bracelet has two flip-over latches to secure it to the wrist. Moki says an extra link was added a few years ago by a local jeweler, "
to accommodate a few extra pounds".
And now it's back on his wrist:
Thanks Moki, for your work on our country's behalf, and for the chance for us to look at your watches.
Cazalea
Please go on to Part 3 of Navy SEAL watches.
This message has been edited by cazalea on 2015-04-21 11:46:31 This message has been edited by cazalea on 2015-04-21 12:20:31