The sailing timer has been developed together with some of the top sailors in the world. Experience from the Whitbread Around the World Race and dinghy and keel boat World Championships has been put into one compact package that travels conveniently with you, keeping you up-to-date at all times.

The electronic compass of the Suunto Mariner is a great tool for direction taking for any boater. It shows you your bearing and cardinal or half-cardinal points, a North-South arrow, and it features a bearing tracking function which displays locked bearing, actual bearing and the difference between the two. Together with the rotating bezel, you can easily determine the start line bias and memorize wind directions during the race start.

The barometer function of Suunto Mariner keeps you one step ahead of the storm. In addition to current barometric pressure and temperature, Mariner displays the pressure trend of the last 6 hours and history for the past four days to let you really analyze and understand the upcoming weather.

The Suunto Mariner is water resistant, tested to 100 meters/330 feet according to ISO 2281 standard, which means you can use it for swimming or other water sports activities--but it should not be used for scuba diving or freediving.

What's in the Box This package includes the Suunto Mariner wrist-top computer and printed operating instructions. It is covered by a one-year warranty.

As it is, however, it is a great watch. In terms of basic timekeeping, it has everything you need. Time, date, dual time, stopwatch, countdown timer, multiple alarms. Accuracy has been perfect over 2 years. It also has an effective backlight display that stays on for a couple of seconds after you push the button - nice.

In sail mode, the main feature is a timer to aid in sail racing. I am just a recreational racer (solings); but I've come to appreciate this feature very much. Essentially, you set it to count down the number of minutes before the final starting gun goes off. As you manoever your boat for position during those 3 minutes (or whaterver), it gives you chime alarms as the time counts down (two beeps when you have 2 minutes left, another 2 beeps when there is 1 minute left, then beeps every ten seconds until the last 10 seconds, then a beep every second, then a final chime). When the final time is reached, the countdown timer switches to a count-up timer. So, it automatically switches to an exact reckoning of your time in the race. There are additional memory and logbook functions that allow you to keep track of multiple races; but I don't use those features much.

The barometer mode is probably less helpful during a race and more so during cruising. It's accurate enough to give you a head's up when a new weather front is moving in. Again, it has memory and logbook functions that are beyond me.

The compass mode is cool, but I don't use it much. It is accurate; but it's easier for me to use the boat's compass than to look down at my wrist. It would be an excellent backup in an emergency however!

I've looked at a few other watches geared towards sailors, and this has been the best of the bunch. Lots of data presented in an easy to digest fashion.