Very Cool Watches and Very Fast Boats
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Panerai busts out a chronograph and a GMT inspired by the America’s Cup and Italy’s Luna Rossa racing team.
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The Luna Rossa Principle Team on May 23, 2026 in Cagliari, Italy. (Photo: Getty Images)
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The funny thing about dive watches is that 99 percent of us who obsess constantly about owning a good one—yes, including me—have no immediate plans to be anywhere near scuba gear. Fortunately, all the performative functionality of a good diver applies just as well, if not better, where we’re more likely to wear one, like on a boat or at the beach.
Although many sports watch brands offer pieces purpose-built for the ocean, few are more authentic than Panerai. The 90-year-old company built its entire reputation on the performance of rugged dive watches tried and tested for decades in the most extreme conditions—most of them underwater. But when it comes to wearing the modern iterations of those iconic pieces, anywhere near water is still good.
Panerai’s ongoing collaboration with the America’s Cup, sailing’s most glamorous trophy, is a case in point. The brand has been a close partner and sponsor of the Italian Luna Rossa squad from 2019, and it has created as many as 29 specially designed Luna Rossa watches since, including two released just last week and based on the historic Luminor Marina design.
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The 44mm Luminor Luna Rossa Chrono.
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One is a 44mm chronograph with a 42-hour power reserve, the other a 40mm GMT with 72 hours reserve. Both are executed in stainless steel with sun-brushed silver dials. They’re rated to 100 meters of water resistance, which is plenty for a deck, even a wet one. The chronograph is accented with a combination rubber-and-textile strap in gray, with the signature red stripe of Luna Rossa, a color scheme that has remained unchanged since Luna Rossa’s first outings. The GMT, meanwhile, features a stainless-steel bracelet. Both offer something suitably racy, from the chunky functionality of the chronograph to the sleeker looks of the GMT, and feature Panerai’s lever crown guard, a detail that dates all the way back to 1956.
Italian-born Gilberto Nobili is Luna Rossa’s operations manager and mechatronics coordinator. That title may sound a little sci-fi for sailing, a discipline that, for all the technology, still uses terminology derived from Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. But that is the modern face of competition sailing. Once considered an arcane, elitist, and occasionally rather sluggish sport, sailing at this level has been transformed in the past 15 years by the advent of hydrofoiling, the technology that allows the 75-foot America’s Cup racing yachts to fly almost friction-free just above the water. The increased speed (often more than three times what could be achieved before foils) and the evolution of digital media have conspired to bring the thrills and inevitable spills of AC racing to a rapidly expanding audience hungry for the glamor and adrenaline rush of F1, just on the water.
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The 40mm Luminor Luna Rossa GMT.
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Nobili has crewed four America’s Cups with Luna Rossa since 2003 (he’s also sailed for Oracle Team USA and Emirates New Zealand). And he’s been an America’s Cup-winning crew member three times—but never with Luna Rossa. As mechatronics coordinator, he’s responsible for the high-tech wizardry needed to keep a finely tuned boat up on its foils. Back with the Luna Rossa team since 2021, winning the America's Cup for Italy is one of his personal grails. Next year’s competition will be his fifth with Luna Rossa—and his third with a Panerai on his wrist.
“When I was with Team USA back in 2010, right after the first cup I won with Oracle,” he says, “I went straight out and bought myself a Panerai watch. So, for me, Panerai has always been a watch that I feel personally connected to. I think the beauty of Panerai working with Luna Rossa is that we both try to pursue the same goal. It’s a very cool boat, a very cool watch. There’s a lot of technology in both watches and boats, and we share an Italian spirit behind it all, too.”
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The Luna Rossa Principle Team celebrates its victory in the preliminary regatta at Cagliari, near Sardinia.
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It’s been nearly 30 years since Prada’s CEO, Patrizio Bertelli, embarked on his quest to lift the most coveted trophy in sailing for Italy. Every boat put in the water by Bertelli‘s team since then has been called Luna Rossa (or Red Moon). Although the team has yet to snatch the trophy (it’s notoriously hard to wrest it from the holders, currently New Zealand), Luna Rossa has looked like a growing threat in the past two editions. And the passion of the owner, the team, and its supporters remain undimmed.
“The beauty of Luna Rossa, I think, is the heritage, the culture behind it, and, importantly, the spirit of a family,” says Nobili. “You can feel it. When new people join from other teams, they notice that spirit.” Nowhere is that more evident than on race days when the extended families of the crew and logistics teams see them off with much waving of Italian flags accompanied by Italian disco classics blaring on the loudspeakers.
In May, both the primary and the women-and-youth Luna Rossa teams aced their preliminary regattas in smaller AC45 boats in Cagliari, near Sardinia. Not the same boats, not the same water, not the same wind, but it bodes well for the next America's Cup. And, what’s more, the 38th is likely to give Luna Rossa a bit of home advantage as it is taking place in the deep blue waters of the Bay of Naples.
“I'm sure Naples is going to be a place where there will be a lot of that home spirit,” says Nobili. “Barcelona [where the 37th AC was held] was a beautiful city, but it was almost too big; there were always other things going on. Naples is going to be like Italians watching a soccer game. It will be intense.”
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Thanks for reading this week’s Big Black Book newsletter. See you in a couple weeks. Until then, feel free to drop me a note at nicksullivanesquire@hearst.com.
- Nick Sullivan, creative director
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It might not hold up at the America’s Cup, but if you’re looking for a cheap and easy watch with a personality, it’s right here. Speaking of watches, here’s a look inside Romeo Beckham’s collection. Esquire chatted with tennis star Tommy Paul about his Burberry wedding suit. And finally, from the last edition of the Big Black Book newsletter, a peek behind the scenes at fancy luggage maker Rimowa.
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