Marathon Coast Guard

The Marathon Canadian Forces Watch

Images and review by Bob

The watch popularly known as the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) issue wristwatch, is actually more appropriately the Canadian Forces Watch. Watches from the current production run have been sent to the Canadian Forces Bases at Esquimalt as well as Halifax. Current opinion is that these watches are being issued to Canadian SAR Techs.

Here are documents from the most recent Canadian contract (Courtesy of Marathon Watch Company)

Document 1: Contract Award

Document 2: Contract

Document 3: Descriptive and delivery document

This is one of the nicer watches produced by Marathon and it features an ETA 2824-A2, 25 jewel automatic movement with a "cyclops eye" date.

The watch in this review comes from a year 2000 production run, which features several notable changes from prior releases. The major changes include a change from the "script style" lettering on the dial to block letters. A further change is the new "Maraglo" dial luminescence. "Maraglo," is a proprietary process and consists of LumiNova (Strontium Aluminate) that has been baked on to the dial in a several step process. Early CCGs did not feature screw down crowns. This release features a screw down crown.

The uni-directional bezel is a composite synthetic polymer, but the rest of the case and bracelet consist of bead blasted stainless steel. The fit and finish of this watch is rather well done, and usually found on watches made for retail civilian sale. One of the features that really stands out on this watch is a bright orange chapter at the 1200 position. It gives the watch an entirely different look.

The only writing on the back of the case are the NSN nos. 6645-21-558-0133.

The watch measures 40mm X 10mm X 20mm interlug width.

The watch is water resistant to 200 meters.

(Click on images for enlargments)

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