Patrice Chemin joined Comex in early 1970 as a diver and was selected to participate in several experimental hyperbaric dives, including Janus II at 250 m (820 ft.) in 1970, Physalie V, a World Record dive, at 520m (1,706 ft.) in Nov. 1970, Beluga at 180m (590 ft.) in water at ? 2 Celsius (28 F), in 1971, and Physalie VI at 610m (2001 ft.) in May 1972. Patrice Chemin has held the World's Record for deep diving for 11 years. Interrupting his diving career in 1975 due to osteo-bone necrosis, a saturation diving illness, he undertook further academic studies and moved up to the management ranks of Comex/Stolt Offshore, until 1997.
Patrice Chemin has 40 years' experience in the oil & gas industry; his professional assignments took him to the North Sea, the Middle-East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the US.
He has held numerous executive positions in the industry, among them: Vice-President of Stolt Offshore Asia-Pacific, President of Stolt Offshore US, and President of Torch Offshore. He is currently the President of Carmel Contracting and the representative of CCC and Gulmar Offshore in the US.
Patrice holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics & Sciences, a Degree in Business Administration, and an MBA in Business Strategies. He has received several awards, including the CNEXO Gold Medal in 1970 and 1972 and the Pertamina Silver Award (1981).
His collection represents a true collector's dream. These watches are a veritable testament to the man's career at Comex: the tool watch (his everyday Rolex Comex 5514), the world record dive watch (his Sea-Dweller 1665) and the tribute watch (his Submariner 168000), all with unquestionable provenance.
Comex's collaboration with Rolex started in early 1971. Prior to that date, Comex had cooperated with Omega, for the testing of the design of the Ploprof (short for plongeur professionel), of which a prototype series was tested during Janus II and Physalie V (Nov. 1970) However the Ploprof had a major problem, with its ?explosion? during the decompression time after a saturation dive, due to the helium build-up inside the case. Rolex had noted this problem on the early Sea-Dwellers that were not fitted with helium valves and quickly moved to solve this problem by fitting the valves on the side of the case (patent number 492246 ). As the diving development continued, Rolex continue to collaborate and test their watches with the use of professional divers, now with Submariners, which were largely sufficient for dives up to 200 meters. During testing of the 5513 they experienced similar problems with crystals exploding upon decompression. The Comex reference specific 5514 was essentially a 5513 equipped with a valve and a very limited series of Submariners (which the present consigner was a part of) were delivered to Comex Saturation Divers for testing (approximately 20 pieces). This particular batch of watches could be considered the true pre-production prototypes of the 5514, as they were designed to be tested in real-life conditions and bore the following characteristics: they did not feature the Comex logo on the dial (this was to come on the later production model 5514?s) and only had the Comex engraving on the case back with no engraved numbers. To our knowledge there has only ever been one Comex 5514 with an early serial number (case No. 3804848) offered at auction; this is only 7 case numbers away from the present watch, and the watch had all the same features (see Antiquorum November 11, 2007 lot 169).