agreed, reliabilty and accuracy taken together are already reasons enough to pick the quartz over the autos..
didn't really get it when you mentioned "I perfer to leave the chrono running myself." .... u mean it's possible to hack the running second hand in the sub dial?
I'm sure Steve knows much more than us noobs here to have made that advice.
But if a ticking second hand on a 'mechanical' watch gets u on the edge, then do not try this
I read somewhere that the noobmariner accepts gen crown (w gen tube as well).
And I think BK's mariners are based on the noob case with replaced crown & tube too.
Can some experts confirm this?