Straum × The Real Time Show Jan Mayen “Stormy Seas” Limited Edition

If you’re already aware of Norwegian brand Straum, you’re probably also aware of my intimate involvement with the team. I’ve worked with the guys — Lasse and Øystein — for years and regard them both as two of my best friends on planet Earth — a bond that was no doubt strengthened by the travails of our expedition to Jan Mayen and attempt to summit Beerenberg volcano.

And so I present this watch and the story behind it to you as a heavily biased narrator, but if you’ve followed our journey thus far, I am sure you know my passion for this brand and its watches is wholly genuine. I worked with Straum on the design of the Jan Mayen collection itself, and now this iteration (my baby) is the execution I always dreamed of seeing, brought to life three years after the life-changing moment that inspired it.

Between the shores of Svalbard and the black beaches of Jan Mayen, there lies around 600 km of cold, grey, unfeeling ocean. Crossing that foreboding body of water was no small undertaking, but we’d all always had faith our captain and his crew would see us right. We knew roughly five days of sailing lay ahead of us when we cast off from Longyearbyen. What we didn’t know was that around halfway across said ocean, Mother Nature decided she wanted to kill us...

On most days, the seconds of our lives pass quietly. Our schedules tend to be divided into hours, maybe 30- or 15-minute blocks, but very rarely (if ever) seconds. The temporal freedom and the time to make decisions we enjoy on a daily basis is almost always taken for granted. We often wait for the right moment, a brief pause, or a passage of peace and reflection to deliberate over potentially life-altering actions. But whenever disaster rears its threatening head, that luxury evaporates. We are forced to live from one tick of the clock to the next. In those situations, every second counts…

It was August 2022 when the Straum Explorers Club set sail from Longyearbyen, bound for the volcanic island of Jan Mayen. Our intention? To scale Beerenberg, a towering stratovolcano, covered by an ever-shifting glacier.

The majority of our planning had centred around that task. Seldom, as unfathomable as it may seem, had we paid much mind to the Arctic Ocean that stood between us and the start line. In retrospect, that may have been for the best. While it is always wise to be aware of the dangers and difficulties one might face on the high seas, it doesn’t do to dwell on them too obsessively. Consider it too deeply, and you may not dare step foot on the boat in the first place…

Waiting for good weather or knowing when and where a storm is likely to hit is about as much mitigation as one can hope to plan for. But even the best laid plans are at the mercy of nature’s whims. On the open ocean, things change fast. Weather systems rarely behave as predictably as you’d like. And so, simply put, if you decide to make a voyage similar to ours, you are always placing your fate in the hands of the Gods.

Around 300km from land, we ran into a brutal storm. Wind speeds of around 80kph and waves exceeding seven metres in height battered our boat, the 70-foot steel-hulled Valiente. Being caught in a force nine gale, bang slap in the middle of our journey, was no one’s idea of fun. The boat, which was used to trundling along at a steady 6–7 knots, set a personal speed record, frequently topping 21 kts as it careened from towering crest to cavernous trough.

Prior to the storm’s onset, the mood among the 10-man crew had been relaxed and jovial. The moment our new reality hit, our countenances hardened, and a veil of seriousness descended. We spoke sparingly. We gripped support rails tightly, our knuckles turning white. We were well accustomed to the motion of the ocean by that point, so our constitutions held up, but we were all on high-alert, casting anxious glances at one another and occasionally eyeing the fluorescent orange immersion suits we knew we’d have to don if things, as Øystein likes to say in his typically understated manner, “Took a turn for the worse.”

I remember staring out of the window at the surface of the ocean, racing towards us as we fell from a great height, the boat briefly dipping beneath it like a wannabe submarine, and banking the threatening grey blue colour it had adopted. It looked like a portal to another plane of existence. Hopefully, I recall thinking, not the afterlife…

For days, we’d been used to a preternatural silence. With no phones, no devices, and no hint of scintillation, we’d become acclimatised to a quietness that none of us had experienced for very long on dry land. On the ocean, the endless silence became an almost corporeal thing. It dawned on us that when there is a complete absence of something, the absence itself has a presence that is just as palpable as the thing it replaced. Now, that silence had been usurped by pure noise. The wind howled and the water wailed as we were propelled over and into the latter by the former.

Within an hour or so of this ceaseless squall, the noise too became normal. I thought it unlikely that any more noise could be added to that cacophony to make it any louder, more terrifying, or more oppressive, but, as is often the case when the mind indulges in such absolutism, Mother Nature pulls another trick from her sleeve.

A deafening bang came from directly above the galley where most of us were seated. We looked through the skylight to see the mainsail torn straight across the middle, fluttering like a busted piñata in the wind. A call came from the pilothouse. We leapt up and dashed up to the command centre to receive orders. Captain John Macken marshalled three of the crew out on deck, clipping into the retaining wires that ran around the deck, and edging carefully towards the mast.

The rest of us stayed inside. A couple manned the pilothouse, while the rest readied the immersion suits and checked our survival equipment in case we were about to take an unscheduled bath.

The sail had to come down. In its current condition, it wasn’t just useless; it was dangerous. Left in that state, untethered and susceptible to receiving massive forces from any direction, it could’ve caused the boat to broach. In this kind of weather, a flogging sail massively reduced stability and increased the chances of capsizing, which would have been less than ideal, 300km from land.

Every passing second felt like a geological era. You could almost hear the thud of the pallet jewel hitting every subsequent tooth of the escape wheel. In those moments, the senses heighten. An awareness of everything erupts in your brain. It’s not so much an out-of-body experience as it is a totally immersive connection to the world and everything in it. Whether natural or manmade, animate or inanimate, everything seemed as one, with time, that moment, those seconds, the unifying force.

The sail came down, and the crew, wet to the bone, crawled back to the relative safety of the cockpit. Stern congratulations were offered secondarily to warm towels, hurriedly gathered from below deck. The immediate threat had passed, but hours of the storm still loomed, and days of limping home on a combination of the jib sail and generator still loomed. We remained in a state of readiness, surrounded by stormy seas, and with those blazing orange immersion suits just feet away, an ever-present reminder of the fate that could’ve befallen us, and reminded, perhaps more than we ever needed to be, that when the chips are down, every second really does count.

I never lost the image of the grey/blue sea and the thought of one or all of us floating along its surface in those fluorescent orange suits. The contrast was stark — as stark as the danger had been in that moment. I resolved that should Lasse and Øystein ever give me the honour, this would be the colour scheme I’d choose for my very own Jan Mayen model. Now, thanks to the blasted and polished Grade 5 Titanium case fitted to the quick release rubber strap, the 39.5 mm wide and 10.1 mm thick watch has never been more wearable. Thanks to the high-contrast fluorescent Orange seconds hand, each and every second is more legible than ever, nodding to the time-critical situation that inspired the design.

The new rubber straps from Straum are a thing of rugged beauty, designed to be durable and easily exchangeable, the complementary colour palette remains on brand, pointing to nature for inspiration for all but one of the colours (Straum’s signature accent colour — bright yellow). While the Straum × TRTS Jan Mayen “Stormy Seas” is presented on a black rubber strap, it looks particularly at home on the sand, the white, and the navy blue too.

Pre-orders open today but will close after two weeks. Our current plan is to collaborate on a TRTS edition of Straum’s current models annually, with the option to revisit popular models. This model, therefore, may return in the future, but there is no guarantee that it will.

If you want to secure this piece while you can (and support The Real Time Show podcast in the process), you can do so by ordering from Straum’s website. The watch is the same price as the regular Jan Mayen collection and available for £1,600 including shipping but excluding VAT.

This watch will be available until November 20 ^th, 18:00 CET (Norwegian time/CET).