Spinnaker Fleuss 40 Automatic Razzle Dazzle

The Spinnaker Fleuss 40 Automatic Razzle Dazzle watch translates early twentieth-century naval camouflage techniques into a modern horological format. During the First World War, the British Admiralty adopted a specific geometric painting style, credited to artist Norman Wilkinson and zoologist John Graham Kerr, designed to disrupt the optical rangefinders used by enemy submarine commanders. Rather than attempting low-visibility concealment by painting ships grey to match the horizon, this Razzle Dazzle camouflage utilized stark contrasting lines, intersecting angles, and complex polygons to obscure a vessel’s bow wave, heading, and overall dimensions. By breaking up the visual silhouette, these aggressive patterns forced opposing naval forces to miscalculate firing solutions for torpedo strikes. A submarine commander looking through a periscope would struggle to determine if the targeted ship was moving toward or away from their position, causing critical delays or forcing them to abandon the engagement entirely. Spinnaker has partnered with Chris Alexander, operating as The Dial Artist, to scale this massive optical disruption down to a forty-millimeter dial surface. Alexander, based in Scotland, applies these historical military patterns using modern horological painting techniques, creating a series of limited-production pieces that merge archival military tactics with contemporary watchmaking.

Alexander’s professional background involves extensive custom dial work for established brands, focusing heavily on hand-applied finishes rather than automated pad printing or stamping. For this specific Spinnaker release, the production involves a regimented multi-stage application process requiring individual masking and curing cycles to build up the complex geometric shapes. The dial surface utilizes specialized color-shifting pigments and layered lacquer over a brass base, demanding strict quality control to maintain the necessary vertical tolerances. Because each unit requires manual painting by the artist, the intersecting lines, paint density, and color boundaries exhibit slight variations across the entire five-hundred-piece production run. This approach fundamentally shifts the manufacturing process away from strict industrial uniformity toward batch-level individualization. The resulting aesthetic balances the rigid, calculated geometry of the original naval camouflage with the inherent minor deviations of a hand-painted object.

The Case and Dial

The Razzle Dazzle edition utilizes Spinnaker’s updated Fleuss 40 architecture, representing a deliberate reduction in case diameter from the brand's original forty-three-millimeter Fleuss dive watches. This transition to a forty-millimeter 316L stainless steel case aligns the model with current market data indicating a strong consumer preference for mid-size, vintage-proportioned dive watches. By shrinking the diameter, Spinnaker also reduces the overall lug-to-lug footprint, improving wearability and balance across a much wider variety of wrist sizes. The steel surfaces feature a mix of standard finishing techniques, utilizing linear brushing on the top of the lugs to hide daily wear and high-polish on the case flanks to provide visual contrast. A screw-down crown with deeply knurled grooves sits protected at the three o'clock position, contributing directly to the watch's tested water resistance rating of 15 ATM, or 150 meters. This specific depth rating positions the watch as fully capable for recreational surface swimming and light aquatic use, though it intentionally stops short of the 200-meter minimum ISO 6425 specification required for professional saturation diving. The dial is protected by an anti-reflective coated sapphire crystal, a significant material upgrade from the highly domed mineral crystals often found on vintage-inspired divers, providing superior scratch resistance during daily wear while minimizing light distortion at sharp viewing angles.

Surrounding the sapphire crystal is a unidirectional rotating bezel featuring a specialized insert that integrates directly with the dial's complex optical pattern. The bezel insert continues the black and white geometric lines outward from the dial, utilizing bright red diamond and numerical markers at the fifteen, thirty, forty-five, and sixty-minute positions to provide clear orientation points against the disruptive background. These red accents serve a critical functional purpose by anchoring the wearer's eye, allowing the elapsed time function to remain highly legible despite the underlying camouflage pattern designed specifically to confuse the eye. The 120-click mechanism provides tactile feedback and precise alignment for the elapsed timing function, ensuring the user can accurately track intervals without the bezel slipping out of position. The dial itself features large, applied circular and rectangular hour markers heavily filled with Swiss luminous material, bordered by polished metallic surrounds that catch available ambient light. The handset consists of a broad, arrow-tipped hour hand and a straight sword minute hand, both generously lumed, paired with a bright red sweeping seconds hand that directly matches the bezel accents. This high-contrast handset ensures that the primary function of time-telling is not lost within the intersecting layers of Alexander's hand-painted blue, black, and white lacquer work.

Applying thick layers of paint and lacquer to a watch dial presents specific, rigid engineering challenges regarding clearance. The total vertical height of the dial cannot exceed the tight tolerances allowed by the movement's canon pinion; otherwise, the hands will physically drag against the painted surface and disrupt the mechanical timing mechanism. Alexander utilizes digital modeling to outline the razzle patterns before applying physical vinyl masking to the raw brass dial blanks. The color-shifting pigment is then applied in stages using a fine-tipped tool, requiring specific, temperature-controlled curing times between coats to ensure chemical stability and prevent flaking under the sapphire crystal. This deliberate method achieves visual depth without building up excessive vertical height that would foul the movement. The dial text, including the Spinnaker brand name positioned below twelve o'clock and the artist signature above six o'clock, is applied precisely over the complex background, requiring exact registration to remain legible against the high-contrast lines.

The Movement

Inside the forty-millimeter steel case, Spinnaker utilizes a Japanese automatic movement, specifically a twenty-four-jewel Miyota caliber. Based on the jewel count printed on the rotor and the deliberate lack of a date complication on the dial, this indicates the use of the Miyota 9039, a premium automatic caliber that operates at a frequency of 28,800 vibrations per hour. This higher beat rate produces a significantly smoother sweep for the red seconds hand compared to the lower frequencies found in entry-level Japanese movements like the Seiko NH35 or the older Miyota 8215 series. The movement provides a standard power reserve of approximately forty-two hours on a full wind, powered primarily by the kinetic motion of the wearer's wrist transferring energy to the mainspring. It features a hacking seconds function, allowing the balance wheel to be stopped completely when the crown is pulled out to the setting position, enabling the user to synchronize the watch precisely to an external reference time such as an atomic clock. Furthermore, the 9039 caliber is noticeably thinner than many competing automatic movements in its price bracket, which directly aids Spinnaker in keeping the overall case thickness of the Fleuss 40 manageable and ergonomic. The escapement utilizes a proprietary anti-shock system, protecting the delicate balance staff pivots from mechanical damage in the event of a sudden impact or drop. This ensures the regulating organ maintains its timing accuracy even under moderate physical stress.

The mechanical components of the Miyota caliber are visible through an exhibition caseback featuring a secondary sapphire crystal window. Rather than leaving the movement in its undecorated factory state, Spinnaker and Alexander have extensively customized the winding rotor, applying a heavy, distinct layer of blue luminous material across the lower half of the oscillating weight. This luminescent application is further overlaid with a green, line-drawn Spinnaker sail logo, creating a dual-color light emission when the watch is viewed from the back in low-light environments. Modifying a winding rotor with luminous paint requires careful calculation, as adding physical mass to the oscillating weight alters its rotational dynamics and overall winding efficiency. The central ball-bearing mechanism must accommodate this increased mass without accelerating wear on the mounting post over the lifespan of the watch. The caseback itself is secured via a threaded screw-down mechanism, compressing a synthetic O-ring gasket to maintain the 15 ATM water resistance rating, with standard specification engravings bordering the exhibition window.

The Bracelet

The Fleuss 40 Razzle Dazzle is equipped with a twenty-millimeter solid stainless steel bracelet utilizing a highly articulated multi-link beads of rice design. This specific historical bracelet architecture consists of larger, brushed outer links flanking five rows of small, highly polished oval central links. The increased number of individual articulating components allows the bracelet to drape and conform much more closely to the organic curvature of the wrist compared to a rigid, standard three-link Oyster-style design. The high polish applied to the central beads provides a reflective surface that purposefully complements the polished sides of the watch case.

The bracelet tapers sharply from the twenty-millimeter lug width down to the clasp, significantly reducing metal bulk on the underside of the wrist and improving overall daily wearability. It secures via a standard fold-over machined clasp equipped with a secondary safety lock and a dual push-button release mechanism. This redundant locking system ensures the watch remains firmly attached during active use, preventing accidental deployment if the primary clasp catches on clothing or diving gear. The bracelet utilizes standard friction pins for sizing adjustments, requiring a basic pin-pusher tool to add or remove links to achieve the correct fit for the user.

Pricing and Availability

The Spinnaker Fleuss 40 Automatic Razzle Dazzle carries a direct retail price of $475 USD. Production of this specific collaboration is strictly limited to 500 numbered pieces globally. The official launch is scheduled for February 26 at 11:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. Consumers who registered their interest prior to the launch date are granted a one-hour priority access window to execute their purchase before general public availability opens.

The manufacturer has implemented a strict purchase limit of one piece per variant, or one bundle set, per individual customer. This sales strategy is designed to mitigate bulk purchasing by secondary market resellers and ensure broader distribution among the actual target consumer base. Given the manual production bottleneck created by the hand-painted dials, the 500-piece limit reflects actual manufacturing and time constraints rather than an artificially induced scarcity model often seen in modern watch releases.

Technical Specifications

Case: 40mm 316L Stainless Steel, 15 ATM Water Resistance

Movement: Miyota 9039, Automatic, 24 Jewels, 28,800 vph

Dial: Hand-painted Razzle Dazzle pattern by Chris Alexander, applied luminous indices

Strap: 20mm Stainless Steel Beads of Rice bracelet with fold-over safety clasp

Price: $475 USD

Reference Number: SP-5165

Notes: Limited to 500 pieces, custom luminous rotor, AR-coated sapphire crystal