How do you keep your Apple Watch on “Ship’s time” when on a cruise?

I have recently done some additional testing while outside my usual time zone. I always test this behavior in case Apple has fixed this issue. The issue is when the time zone is set manually on the iPhone this setting is lost on the Apple Watch when the Watch is disconnected from the iPhone, either by distance, or turning off the iPhone. I have learned that while a manual setting of the time zone is lost when the iPhone is disconnected a manual time setting is not lost. Therefore in a specific case of going off the ship without your iPhone, (like going to the beach or going kayaking off the back of the ship), you can manually set your iPhone to the local time-zone then in addition set the iPhone’s time manually to ship’s time. Then, since your watch’s time zone is already set to the local time zone, your watch’s time won’t change. Your watch’s actual shown time can be an hour or more different than the actual local time. You know you’ve accomplished this by asking Siri the time in your area and the watch shows two different times for the same place: see photo of watch below. I was in Spain when doing this test. The watch is showing London Summer Time while a time zone setting of Central European summer time. Feel free to do your own testing changing time zones changing time manually and turning off your iPhone you must wait a while before your watch reverts 10 minutes maybe. This will vary depending on how your watch is connected to the Internet while your phone is off.

Hopefully, the setting for the time zone can be set permanently the way the time can be, through the iPhone, with future updates, and this problem will disappear. The watch’s time zone should not be changed by simply turning off the iPhone! Especially since there is no setting on the Watch itself. Currently, when your iPhone is not connected to your Apple Watch, the Apple Watch’s Time zone is only set automatically and cannot be changed or set in any way.

Note: this work around does not work in places where you are near the border of a time zone. With the problem of their watch, changing by an hour, every other minute this will not help. If you live near the border of a time zone and your watch changes by an hour every other minute this will not fix that problem. Only an update that causes the manual set time zone to stick will address that issue. Really both the time zone and time should have separate settings for automatic or not, and those settings should always stick to the Apple Watch, and not change based upon whether it is connected to the iPhone or not. Or, have the settings on the Apple Watch itself.

The method that I have found, I marked as helpful above. Since only the time zone switches and not the time, when disconnected from the iPhone, it makes me wonder how/why it would have been written that way. So, if you always need to be on UTC, if you are in the military, etc., and work and a global command center of some kind, before work each day set the time zone to the area you physically work and manually adjust the time to UTC. Note, when you do this that the seconds are reset, so do it while watching the time and do it exactly at “00” seconds. It would be so much better if you could just set the Time Zone on your iPhone to UTC and when you walked to the other side of The Pentagon or MacDill AFB your watch still showed the correct time. Most people on any given base will have their watches on local time, using military/international 24 time. However, my guess is many at “CENTCOM” in Tampa probably keep their watches on UTC or potentially the local time zone of an engagement, while on duty. I mention “CENTCOM” only because Tampa is my home city and I knew people that previously worked at “CENTCOM”.