I’ve read before that you shouldn’t listen to a band after their third album, as they lose their touch, and the music is a shade of the musicians’ former glory. What, then, of reading the fourth in a series of reviews of affordable GMTs? Do I have anything left to say, and more so, is there anything left to say? Fortunately, the newest Venturer from Traska lent an assist, as it is a watch with a plethora of details worth writing about.
In what has become a personal theme for 2024, Venturerer arrived just before I departed for an international trip. This time, I was off to Nairobi on my first trip, not just to Kenya but to Africa. I’ve had a lifelong desire to visit Africa, and while this trip wasn’t the overlanding expedition I dreamt of, it was nonetheless an opportunity I’d anticipated for quite some time. It also was a chance to utilize the Venturer in the conditions for which it was designed.
My excitement for the trip was reflected in my anticipation for the newest iteration of the Venturer. It didn’t take decades to come my way, but I’ve been eager to get my hands on the GMT version of the watch since I tried one on at District Time in 2023. In that initial viewing, the Venturer struck me as a compelling candidate for an “architect’s GMT.” What does that mean? There was a running stereotype in the car world that Saabs – may they rest peacefully in their eternal glory – were an architect’s car, based in part on their quirky, pragmatic, and cohesive design. Those same attributes ring true for the Venturer, which references some vintage models but also sets its own path.
Before my travels got very far along, the Venturer’s on-the-fly adjustable clasp was put to the test as I rode out an hour-long delay sitting on a plane with a busted air conditioning. Good thing it was one of the hottest days of the year, as the situation let me test just how far the adjustment can go to accommodate the human body’s reaction to being broiled. It turns out that the Venturer’s five micro-adjust positions can accommodate such a scenario. Kindly, the aircrew did pass out some of the driest crackers ever made to soothe us and to stifle the passengers’ ability to actually verbalize any complaints. We also learned that giving everyone full water bottles to mitigate the heat is a choice made in favor of the present good to the detriment of the future good. Bathroom lines ensued.
While a little extra firm in operation, the clasp still functioned better on that scalding tarmac than the plane’s AC. The adjustment system wasn’t challenging to use but required a degree or so of effort above ease. That said, I’d much rather such a function be tuned to require more force than less, as it reduces the likelihood of accidental release. The rest of the bracelet is, in typical Traska fashion, quite excellent. The three-link style harkens to Rolex’s Oyster bracelet, and Traska has continually evolved their bracelets to decrease weight, increase machining and finishing, and improve comfort. For the Venturer, the links are brushed along their upper and lower surfaces and polished on their sides, with a crisp edge delineating the two finishes. The bracelet’s vintage character is also captured in its taper, from 20mm at the lugs to 16mm at the clasp.
The construction, and dimensions, of the bracelet proved comfortable and secure through flights, long days of meetings, and the temperature fluctuations of a day-long safari. Unlike many other newer microbrand offerings, the Venturer’s bracelet does not include quick-release pins. Much as they’ve become an expected component for offerings in the Venturer’s market space, I don’t find it to be a great loss, given how great the bracelet is overall. We also aren’t talking about the type of spring bar quality and access you’ll find on certain Seiko models; there’s plenty of space afforded in the end links for a spring bar tool, making the bracelet removal and attachment process relatively easy.
With many words spent describing the bracelet, let us consider that to which it is affixed. As is the case throughout the Traska lineup, the Venturer’s case evokes mid-century tool watches, with an abundance of curves and but a few hard lines that accentuate surface changes. The slim midcase is polished on its sides and vertically brushed on top. Between the two finishes is a polished chamfer that extends from lug tip to lug tip on either side, with a graceful taper inward as it rounds the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. In my review of the Doxa 200T, I mentioned that the polishing on the watch wasn’t anything special. The opposite is true for the Venturer, on which the polishing is done to the extent that you can see a miniature defined reflection of yourself. It isn’t Grand Seiko levels of mirror polishing, but it is also excellent.
Altogether, the Venturer rings in at 38.5 mm wide, 46mm lug-to-lug, and 12.5mm in height. The height dimension is misleading, as nearly 3mm of the measurement comes from the bubble sapphire crystal. Traska’s website quotes a height of 9.75mm for the case height alone, which more accurately captures how the Venturer wears. Despite those tidy dimensions, the Venturer maintains 150m of water resistance, beyond reasonable expectations for a non-dive watch, and very helpful when feeding giraffes, which have a rather slobbery way of licking food from your hand.
Seated on the flanks of the gorgeously-polished midcase are two crowns at the 10 and 3 positions. Each has a classic, deep, coin-edge grip and a polished bevel that angles to the embossed decoration on each crown. At 3, you have Traska’s Gordian knot graphic logo, and at 10 is a two-dimensional graphic representation of the Earth’s latitude and longitude lines. The latter is a fun play on the crosshatch detail utilized heavily for dial-crown dive watches, tailored here to the Venturer’s purpose as a globe-trotting companion. The only issue I have with the crown arrangement is that the timing-ring control at 10 o’clock sacrifices pragmatism for quirk. It is easy enough to use when holding the watch, but it is a challenge to adjust while the watch is on the wrist. If you wear your watch on your right wrist, though, rejoice, as you’ll have an easier time actuating the timing ring while wearing the Venturer.
One of the updates Traska made between the launch of the newest Venturer and production was to make both crowns decoupling. Over-simplified, this means that the crowns mechanically detach from their respective gearing as you screw them in. In practice, this reduces the opportunity for accidental engagement of the internal timing ring when using the crown at 10, and makes for a much smoother feel when screwing in either crown.
Atop the midcase, the bezel is angled to a point, which creates an undercut that separates the bezel from the top of the midcase. The upper portion of the bezel has two distinct surfaces, a lower polished band, and a wider, circular-brushed band that sits adjacent to the sapphire crystal. This is the kind of attention to detail that excites me – the Venturer would have been fine with a more typical brushed bezel that sat flush to the midcase, but Traska added a flourish and finished it to a high degree.
Visually nested within the bezel is a dial that appears decidedly straightforward affair at first glance. Classic-looking applied bar indices, with a double helping at 12 and a date window at 6 with a polished surround, do not push the design envelope into the avant-garde. Timekeeping is tracked with the sensible choice of baton hour and minute hands, a polished conductor’s baton of a seconds hand, and a GMT hand with an outsized orange triangle affixed to a skinny polished post. Though these elements are far from boring, nothing about the dial furniture immediately screams at you.
Let your eyes linger, though, and you’ll see that the hands and indices are polished to such a high degree that they catch light even when your eyes struggle to do so. The rotating internal timing ring could easily be mistaken for a more common rehaut, with how tight the seam is between it and the dial plate. The timing ring and dial plate are also excellently color-matched, which I don’t take for granted, having experienced watches where these elements could be, at best, considered cousins. On this model, the dial and rehaut are a deep green that calls to mind arboreal forest in brighter, natural light, and which flops to an inky black in certain light. This “Bottle Green,” as Traska refers to the hue, is an upgrade in my view from the “Woodland Green” that was previously offered in the Venturer lineup.
Those color flops were starkly visible during the final day of my trip when a few similarly restless souls set out before dawn for a multi-stop safari-lite experience. The Venturer’s lume proved more than adequate to help me understand what time it was in when I awoke at 4:00 am, though the Miyota 9075 does not yet have a complication to let me know if being up at such an hour was a wise choice.
Fortunately, the environment quickly confirmed the merits of my early start. As we set off in our safari-prepped version of the Mystery Machine, the sky turned a bright gray that I’ve only experienced in equatorial areas, a magical merging of light and dark. Crepuscular sounds abound, baboons calling to each other lazily as we stood in the parking lot awaiting our entry window to Nairobi National Park, where we spent the majority of the day.
From dawn to early afternoon, we bounced – literally – down dirt paths following wildlife with, at times, unreasonable speed. There was a particularly thrilling moment (thrilling because we didn’t actually crash) when our van and another sped towards each other and rally-turned in the same direction after getting a call that there were lions down the path. Through all this vehicular tumult, the Venturer’s hardness coating kept the watch looking new despite the number of times it bumped or scraped against the metal roof of the van. Moto-surfing on dirt roads is not a watch-friendly environment, but the Venturer endured the experience better than my body.
While I might question the responsibility of sustaining high speeds through a protected natural area, our guide team did get us in close proximity to animals that I’d previously only seen in books, on TV, or in captivity. The aforementioned lions, ostrich, black rhinos, giraffes, hippos, and crocodiles were among our many non-human companions for the day. A group of four juvenile lions accompanied us for about 45 minutes during a rare slow moment of driving, their curiosity of us barely going beyond the attention they’d pay any creature they don’t intend to eat. We drove off just before this small pride began their hunt of a herd of eland, but even so, it was magical to see all these beings move in a way made impossible by an enclosure.
After a quick run back to the hotel to get packed and cleaned up, I was off to the airport. The week was a whirlwind of activity (the tale of my adventures through Nairobi’s Central Business District is a story unto itself ) that left me feeling as if I had watched a movie of my own life. Even now, writing this from the comfort of home, the experience still feels surreal, fleeting, and somehow unrooted. Since I’ve returned, the Venturer has been a point of continuity, a way to trick my brain into grounding itself in the memories, to remind myself that I was there, in a place that I’ve waited decades to see, and to which I long to return. It is a visceral reminder of something imagined turning to something experienced and all the complexity therein.
For more info about the Venturer, check here.
