Hello and welcome to another episode of The Gray Nido, a Hodinki podcast, a loose discussion of Travel, Adventure, Diving, Gear, and Most Certainly Watches.

This is episode 90, and we thank you for listening.

Today's episode is a conversation I had with Paul Skurfield, a UK-based commercial saturation diver.

For some, Paul may be familiar from his other job as the founder of the Skurfa Watch Company, a brand he started in order to make tough

affordable watches he and his fellow divers could wear on the job. But Paul isn't just

a micro-brand champion. He's collected tutors, Rolex's and the odd Patek Philippe over the years, and remembers

his teenage years looking longingly at Comex and military submariners in the Army Navy shops

in Newcastle England, before their prices got to where they are today.

Paul talks to me about his work in commercial diving, the nature of this arcane kind of work,

his history collecting and wearing watches, and he explains why older iPhones

were more helium-safe than newer ones. We also talked a little bit about running his

own small brand and the philosophy behind Skurfa. A note, this recording was done several months ago via Skype between Paul's home base in

England and mine in the US. At the time we didn't have a specific intention of using it

for the gray NATO, so the sound quality isn't quite up to the standards you've

come to expect from TGM. But I think the content of my chat with Paul is worth it, which is why we decided

to run this as a full episode. I hope you enjoy it. So you're on dry land for a while?

Yes, I should be here another, maybe two weeks before I go back, so I'm just getting busy busy with I come home and I have a lot to do when I come

I'm trying to tone it down a bit I've had all sorts of plans to to make all sorts of new designs

and automatic watches but at the minute I think I'm just going

to mainly concentrate on the quartz diver one watches. Oh sure. And the bell divers that I've

already done so it just creates too much too much work. Well, I can imagine.

I mean, the diving work is full-time when you're on

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