The Anti-Rolex, Rolex

An owner's perspective on the Titanium Yacht-Master 42

May 01, 2025

Like all good stories, this one begins with an obsession. This is the account of one watch collector’s multi-year quest to acquire what might be the most anti-Rolex Rolex ever made - the Titanium Yacht-Master 42 (henceforth: TYM). Mr. Rehaut will tell you the story himself, but first, allow me to introduce our guest author.

Estimated reading time: ~ 14 minutes

Meet Mr. Rehaut

If I recall correctly, I started talking to Mr. Rehaut during the pandemic. We shared some mutual friends and eventually formed a direct friendship of our own. I had the pleasure of meeting him when he visited London a couple of years ago, accompanying his wife on a work trip.

Long before meeting in person, I suspected we’d get along because he’s fundamentally a logic-driven person, which had been clear in all our conversations before meeting. I also knew he must be a rather large human based on his wrist shots and our shared love of lifting heavy objects. Some of his squat and deadlift numbers sounded, frankly, preposterous.

And yes, when I finally met him, that’s precisely what I found - directions like “look for the big guy” will never be more appropriate than when telling someone to find him in a room. While he's not quite at Jack Reacher levels of enormity, I’d say he is the closest ‘normal person’ I have met, to being Jack Reacher - and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

Beyond his physical presence, I’d say his curious mind is what stands out. We’ve often discussed the most arbitrary topics for no reason other than finding new information interesting - from pharmacology to military hardware, exercise, sleep, material science, and politics!

Anyway, when he got this watch, I knew he would have interesting things to say about it. He was busy, and made no promises, but once I convinced him to write something, it took him about 24 hours to get it done. Another similarity we share: once something gets into our heads, we can’t let it go! You’ll understand this quality when you read his story below.

I pursued getting him to write this piece because of the positive reaction to the Romain Gauthier C6 post - readers seem to love reading about ‘user experiences’. This isn’t quite the same long-term deep dive as the C6 account; it is more a journey from obsession to conclusion, which is a different sort of user experience altogether.

I loved reading his story, and I’m sure you will too.

Over to Mr. Rehaut...

The Seed of an Obsession is Planted

Like many of the readers here, my first glimpse of the TYM came back in early 2021 by way of Rolex Magazine where Jake had successfully put the pieces together of the prototype TYM. I may have some obsessive compulsive tendencies, but I do not have the skill set nor attention span to investigate Ineos Britannia Team training session photos nor interviews of Sir Ben Ainslie with the hopes of teasing out a Rolex prototype in the works. The prototype had a number of features that did not make it to the production model (or rather, were added), i.e. no date window and it was worn on a custom Nato strap, perfect for the actual environment it was being tested in.

At the time, my obsession with titanium as a material was in its infancy, but I was already evangelizing my somewhat ludicrous blue camouflage titanium G-Shock GMWB5000TCF2 (trust me, I don’t know this silly reference by heart – I looked it up one time to include it here), with its entirely titanium case and bracelet as being the most comfortable watch I’d ever owned. To this day, I wear this G-Shock ALL THE TIME if I’m doing any level of activity above typing at my computer. The thought of that material being used by Rolex immediately overrode any impulse control I feign having – screenshots were taken, and I began spamming the word “DIBS” over text to my AD - fully knowing that this watch may never exist.

Get to Know Your Guest “Author”

On Instagram, I post pseudo-anonymously under the moniker of "@whats_a_rehaut. Six years ago, I felt the need (for no apparent reason) to start a watch-IG with little more than a Breitling and Grand Seiko to my name. Honestly, it’s been one of the more impactful throwaway/whimsical decisions of my adult life, as it’s given me a forum to build a handful of unbelievable friendships with people I never would have known existed otherwise all over the globe.

I’ll state my biases up front. I collect modern sports watches, not because I’m a hype beast but because a fair-minded observer would describe me, physically, as a beast. I’m very large in a Midwest farmer sort of way who moonlights doing deadlifts and zercher squats for actual enjoyment. I have an 8” wrist (on a warm day – apologies to the college-age women who overheard Erik of Hairspring and I autistically talking wrist sizes in a CU Boulder coffee shop and stormed out, disgusted) and anything short of 40mm diameter looks silly to my eye.

When ogres wear 40mm watches, they don't look normal — Comical, really.

I have the capacity to get super technical, but I choose not to – watches are an anachronism. They serve little to no purpose in the modern world other than creating external signals to others or bringing enjoyment to you, as the owner. I tend to lean into the enjoyment that they bring to me as an extension of my personality and as the singular piece of male jewelry that’s appropriate beyond a wedding ring (or sunglasses – PM me if you want to go down that rabbit hole). To loosely quote Marie Kondo, I collect watches to “spark joy.”

I genuinely and truly want NO ONE to know the watch I’m wearing at any given point in time. I say this tongue in cheek, because I often imagine a scenario where one random dude calls it out from across the room at a work conference and we become bros for life. The moral of the story is, I’d prefer if 99.9% of society was oblivious to any watch I wear, other than someone who’s really far down this watch collecting rabbit hole.

2023 Release – Is this thing actually off-catalog?

After two full years of peppering my AD with quarterly and hopefully humorous “dibs reminders,” Watches & Wonders 2023 officially unveiled the Titanium Yacht-Master 42 on full Oyster bracelet. I can only imagine the onslaught of texts the Rolex SAs received that fateful day, but my message remained consistent, “Reminder of pre-existing dibs.”

Then reality hit. I don’t know if anyone is quite certain if Rolex had unintentional or intentional production limitations, but in some cases ADs saw more off catalog pieces in a calendar year than the TYM. Everywhere I traveled for work in 2023 and 2024, I plied Rolex SAs for information just asking, “have you even seen one yet?” In most cases, the answer was a simple “no” or “I wish,” and I believed them because the responses were so consistent - everywhere. Whatever the case may be, I know locally my rather large and long-term AD had seen only a single one come through the store between 2023 release and Spring of 2025.

I heard rumors that early Titanium Oyster bracelet iterations had been met with complaints about squeaking during standard wear, and that was alluded to as the reason for low production until Rolex 100% ironed out that issue. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know the real story here, but in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, I began to notice a trend on Instagram (yes, I’d set an alert for #226627) where more and more of these were trickling out into the population. Emboldened by Rolex not discontinuing it in W&W 2025, I continued on with my AD.

A Redbar Tease, followed by an Incredible Troll

Two weeks ago, I attended a local Redbar for the first time in over a year – immediately upon entry there was a buzz that piqued my ears specifically as there was a TYM making the rounds on people’s wrists. After 4 years of imagining this object in my own head and doom-scrolling Instagram late at night through one squinted, near-sighted eye, I could finally put one on my wrist.

The first impression I had visually was that this is perhaps the most anti-Rolex, Rolex ever conceived – in a delightful way. Almost every surface from case to bracelet is entire brushed with only brief interludes for mirror finishing. The bezel itself is matte-finished as well, broken by ceramic nearly mirror finished on the numbers and indices. The most alluring part to me is the dial, which I’d describe more as a dark grey than the standard black Rolex highly glossy dial that you see on everything. This is Rolex toned down to a non-flashy level, while still maintaining pops of reflectivity of light on the standard hand set, indices, and rehaut (what is that anyway?). After a brief time on the wrist (more on that later), I begrudgingly handed it back after experiencing the seven stages of grief in under 3 minutes.

Six days after Redbar, I received a cryptic image from my Rolex SA:

Troll image — This is the *actual* image, not an error on the website!

In proper Paul Bunyan style I was outside chopping down trees in knee high rubber boots at the time and didn’t reply for an hour. I asked “wtf pic was that?” He replied, “I’m really going to want to see it,” and sent the same broken image again. I told him that thus far this had been an incredible troll because I had absolutely no idea what he was trying to tell me. To which he replied, “well an incredible watch requires something unique. When can you come down? Your Yacht-Master has been allocated.”

At this point, I couldn’t tell if the troll was ongoing or if it was finally happening, so I called. To my shock, it was real. Two days later, I made a 7 hour round trip drive to receive it in person, and let me tell you, I’d drive 7 hours any day to receive something like this.

Pseudo-Technical Stuff

Quick spec sheet for the reference 226627 Yacht-Master: Case and bracelet constructed from RLX (Grade 5 Titanium). Featuring an in-house movement caliber 3235 (the same as 126610 Submariners) with a 70-hour power reserve.

Diameter is 42mm, which is roughly 1mm larger than current generation Submariners, with case thickness of 11.6mm and lug to lug of 50.3mm.

With all of the standard measurements out of the way, which you could collect easily from Grok or ChatGPT, I think the most noteworthy aspect of the watch is the material itself and how it differs from 904L steel. The first thing everyone who touches this is struck by is the dramatic, almost mind-bending lightness as compared to a Submariner. This comes from the relative density difference of titanium (~4.43g/cm³) versus 904L stainless steel (~8/cm³), making it ~45% less dense – to dramatic effect.

The other aspect that might not be immediately obvious unless you’ve handled titanium is the thermal conductivity difference between it and 904L stainless steel. Grade 5 titanium conducts heat roughly 2.3x less efficiently than stainless steel, meaning it maintains a more neutral temperature sensation than any stainless steel watch you’ve experienced. It basically feels exactly the same every moment of every day no matter the ambient temperature; something that cannot be said for stainless steel.

The Wearing Experience and Comparisons to other Rolices (this should be accepted as the correct plural form, come on)

For some context, I presently own both the current generation Rolex Pepsi, as well as the Rolex Submariner (Cermit). Slipping the TYM on the wrist for the first time, my immediate thought was that the “invisible” aspects of the watch (i.e. clasp feel, bracelet feel and fit, bracelet tolerances) were 1-2 generations better from a purely “feel” perspective. I can’t quantify this with any specific numbers or press releases explaining why, but that’s the feeling I’m left with. Popping out the crown to positions 1 and 2 feels (and sounds) better. Winding sounds more pleasing – I’m unsure if there’s some auditory property that I’m unaware of pertaining to titanium, but the overall experience is oddly more tactile/ASMR than with my Submariner.

On the wrist, it’s obviously a larger watch at 42mm. For my 8” wrist, this is obviously not an issue, but the overall muted color scheme and design elements, such as more contoured, downwardly turned lugs inherent to the Yacht-Master line in general does work to minimize the larger size. With the case thickness of 11.6mm coupled with a larger lug to lug profile and lighter case material, the TYM wears and feels considerably thinner on the wrist than modern Submariners – it’s a truly amazing sensory experience to feel the entire watch and bracelet “disappear” on your wrist, almost becoming part of your arm. For those of you who want to feel the heft of a precious metal and want to be constantly reminded of your investment, the TYM provides the polar opposite experience.

Her first reaction was, “It looks more high end than Rolex usually does.” I’ve thought about this at length as every design choice interpreted in isolation appears to have been chosen to remove the customary Rolex flash and bravado. Almost every surface is brushed, the bezel insert is primarily a matte finish, and even the dial has been muted to a less reflective dark grey. I think this is where this complete package actually shines, as the sum truly is greater than the individual parts. The choices of less mirror-polished or glossy finishes emphasize the design elements in a way that speak to me personally – it is not “in your face” Rolex, but rather a nod to Rolex’s ability to create an experience. No one else has to know what’s on your wrist, and even I might forget it’s there (just not any time soon).

Nothing is Perfect – Critiquing the Crown (and an off-catalog recommendation for the future)

Revisiting pictures of the original prototype, one can immediately see Rolex-ian evolutions moving to a production model. Receiving the obligatory call-out is the addition of a Cyclops date - likely the most distinctive and still divisive aspect of the Rolex aesthetic. I really think that we could have done without the Cyclops here, leaning into the utilitarian finishing, materials, and muted colorways with an overall final simplification of the aesthetic. Rolex chose to go with it, and I don’t hate it at all – it makes it distinguishable as a Rolex, but we truly could have done without it on this occasion.

The titanium Oyster bracelet is simultaneously the best part of this watch and also a let-down. Who else was excited for a classic Rolex over-engineered, patented and truly indestructible take on a Nato? I know I was, and I was expecting a proprietary Nato material that would outperform Kevlar yet only be used to affix a watch to your wrist. The bracelet is absolute perfection, but I would have loved to see the Crown letting down its hair a bit more and including a Nato option. Perhaps that’s asking far too much.

Depending on your light source, the brushed titanium case and bracelet can look extraordinary or completely drab. I’m looking squarely at standard in-store or in-home yellow lights here. In that lighting, you may wonder briefly if it’s actually a cheaply made knock off that you’re wearing, as the brushed titanium pulls as very drab and dull, lacking any luster. Contrast that with how it looks in any other lighting and it’s perhaps the starkest difference-per-light-source I’ve ever encountered.

Looking at the TYM, I immediately see the opportunity for the most understated off-catalog piece in history, which could be accomplished simply by selecting a darker meteorite material and replacing the dial. Thematically, it would match the overall tones of the watch and create an even subtler nod to those “in the know.” I know that by even mentioning this, I’ve unlocked a magical seal which had kept an elf in a slumber somewhere in Switzerland, and that elf will now need to toil until this is realized – to that elf, I apologize. Also please, no Cyclops.

Closing Thoughts (if you can call them that)

The first thing I said to myself and some friends about 30 minutes into owning the TYM was, “I now understand fully why Rolex is gatekeeping this so hard.” The Oyster bracelet with so much less mass while maintaining the strict Rolex tolerances wears like a completely different, and entirely better bracelet in a league of its own. This is bar none the most comfortable Rolex I’ve ever owned and punches considerably above it’s weight class in the sub-$15k MSRP bracket.

Rolex substituted the usual mirror polished finishes for a more industrial, heavily brushed aesthetic – combined with the significantly less glossy dark grey dial and matte ceramic bezel insert finishing, they created a supremely cohesive aesthetic that screams “Rolex” only through its subtlety, rather than its loudest attributes.

In conclusion: I would easily take the TYM instead of anything presently in the market <$40k with absolutely no hesitation1.