Zenith Captain Winsor Annual Calendar Chronograph

The annual calendar is truly a technological marvel.

While it plays second fiddle to the perpetual calendar in the minds of most collectors, the reality is that the construction of this calendar mechanism — which generally requires adjusting only once per year, at the end of February — is equally challenging, and in some cases, requires even more components.

And while Zenith isn’t typically known for its calendar watches — it’s much more renowned for its chronographs — the brand made an interesting detour through the land of complications in the 2010s with the Captain Winsor line. Outfitted with a mechanism developed by famed watchmaker Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, whose technology has featured both in Ulysse Nardin designs as well as in watches from his own brand, Ochs und Junior, the Captain Winsor is an unusual and compelling collection that’s long gone overlooked by collectors. 

This particular Captain Winsor from the late 2010s is housed in a 42mm 18K yellow gold case with a sapphire crystal, a signed crown, dual ‘cushion’ pushers, and a polished bezel. It features a satin silver ‘hobnail’ dial with yellow gold applied indices, a matching ‘dauphine’ handset, day and month apertures at 3 o’clock, a date aperture 6 o’clock, a running seconds totalizer at 9 o’clock, and a 60-minute chronograph totalizer above 6 o’clock. 

Powering this unique annual calendar with its unusual dial configuration is the Oechslin-modified Zenith El Primero Calibre 4054, an automatic movement with a lateral clutch and column wheel for smooth operation. An impressive design that can be viewed via a sapphire caseback, it needs manual adjusting just once a year in February. 

Paired to a signed, brown alligator leather strap with a signed, 18K yellow gold pin buckle, this calendar watch from one of the world’s most renowned chronograph manufacturers is a wildly good value, in addition to an impressive piece of horological engineering.

There aren’t too many timepieces quite like it out there — check it out for yourself!

Georges Favre-Jacot began producing pocket watches in Le Locle at the age of twenty-two. By the turn of the 20th century, Favre-Jacot was producing marine chronometers and chronometer-grade movements, one of which won a chronometry competition in Neuchâtel in 1903. Under the name Zenith, formally established in 1911, Favre-Jacot expanded his production to include wristwatches.
Zenith's chronographs in particular gained a reputation for excellence. At first Zenith used Excelsior Park and Valjoux movements, sharing them with Universal Genève and Movado (with which Zenith would merge for a time in 1969). By the 1960s Zenith acquired ébauche manufacturer Martel and began using their movements exclusively, leading to lauded calibers such as the 146HP and 146DP, which launched in 1969.
1969 was a banner year for horology, as it saw the launch of the first automatic chronograph movement. This was a race between a team consisting of Hamilton, Heuer, Buren, Dubois-Depraz, and Breitling; Seiko; and Zenith. Zenith used the Caliber 146 as a basis for the caliber which the brand would dub "El Primero" — "the first." Of the consortium’s Caliber 11, Seiko’s reference 6139, and the El Primero, only the latter feature a “high-beat” movement for increased accuracy.
Zenith ceased using manually-wound movements in their chronographs after the introduction of the El Primero — however, then the Quartz Crisis of the 1970s hit, and the company was sold. Employees were ordered to destroy or otherwise liquidate their mechanical watchmaking tooling, but incredibly, one daring engineer, Charles Vermot, decided to hide machinery behind a false wall that he built himself in the attic of the company’s manufacture in Le Locle. He told no one about what he was doing — not even his family.

Then, in the 1980s after the company had changed hands once again, he led modern Zenith management to this secret cache of horological wonders, in which the El Primero tooling was hidden. Ebel placed the first modern order for El Primero movements in 1984, but it was Rolex, who ordered thousands of calibers to power their new automatic Daytonas, that saved the firm. Today, the El Primero powers numerous vintage-inspired chronographs as well as the new Chronomaster Sport, a watch aimed as a competitor at — with much irony — the Daytona.

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Most of our products are on hand and will ship directly from our headquarters in New York City. In some cases, watches will be shipped directly from one of our authorized partners.

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