Here is one of my favorite watches. Obviously, it is very cool because it is a Red Submariner. That would be enough to make it an awesome watch. But I have bought, worn, and sold a few red Subs over the years. I have never felt compelled to keep and wear one until this one came along.

I have been a huge Jimmy Buffett fan since I was a young kid in the 1970s. I am still a fan and have been to many, many shows over the years (and you'd be hard pressed to see a better live show, whether you are a fan or not). So, when faced with the opportunity to buy a watch that belonged to Buffett, I couldn't say no. I mean, here is Jimmy Buffett's watch, but it's not any watch. It's a Rolex. Moreover, it's not any Rolex, is it? It's a Sub - and not an ordinary Sub, but a RED Sub! How do I pass on that?

Here's how it came to pass: Several years ago I ran across the watch on eBay. The guy who was selling the watch listed it as Jimmy Buffett's former watch. Obviously, I was skeptical. Not so much that I didn't want to find out for sure, though. I contacted the seller and we spoke several times by phone. It turned out that he had been a prominent member of Buffett's cew for many years and had bought the watch directly from Buffett in the early 1980s. Clearly I was able to check out his credentials and he was who he said he was. I was able to verify that he had been - as he claimed - a prominent member of the crew, so the rest made perfect sense.

As we were working out a deal for the watch, he told me its condition. He is a diver and had gone on a recent dive with the watch. Lo and behold, when they got back to shore, he realized that the watch had taken on water.

He took it to his local Rolex dealer who pointed out that the seals were bad - particularly the seal between the crown and the tube. Rather than have it fixed, and not being a "watch guy," he decided to sell it. By the time I got it, it still had water in it! Not a little water, either. The markers had been discolored. The date wheel was unreadable on a lot of dates and the watch was not running.

I opened it up and took it to my watchmaker so that we could stop the bleeding. He removed the movement and dried it out. I then sent it to Rolex in Dallas. They looked at it, noted the water damage, and told me that because of the water damage they would have to change the dial if they were to work on it at all. Well, that didn't work for me, so I told them to just send it back.

When it got back to me, I took it back to my watchmaker, who is very good. This time, he took it completely apart, disassembling the movement entirely. He cleaned it and oiled it and put it back together. In the meantime, I bought a new date wheel and a new bezel insert (I still have the originals) and he put it back together for me. It has been running great and keeping good time ever since.

I wear it a bunch and absolutely love it. I pulled some of my old albums out after I bought it (after all we had moved to CDs by then) and can't help wondering if this is it in any of the following photos. What do you think?

As a side note, Jimmy Buffett is clearly a "watch guy." If you check any photos, even recent ones, you will see that he generally wears nice watches. In fact, when I was trying to convince Rolex in Dallas to repair the watch and just put the old dial back on, I told them that the watch had once belonged to Buffett. The guy I dealt with told me that that was interesting because they had just that week received a gold moonphase Rolex from the 1940s (if memory serves) sent in by Buffett for service.

Anyway, that's my story (and I will avoid - sort of - the compulsion to say that I'm sticking to it).