WatchKit - WKGestureRecognizer(s)

WatchKit does not allow Gesture recognizers to be assigned to objects in code (i.e. Longpress to a button) all docs i found require a drag and drop of the Gesture type from the tool area to the object. However the iOS builder using Visual Studio (PC) and VS - MAC do not provide the Gesture tool components and adding it using Xcode or manually to the Storyboard works but crashes the iOS builder in VS hence forth. The code to test times are too long to strictly work in the storyboard xml source. I'm guessing since all Xamarin docs say to do the drag and drop in the storyboard that this is a bug ? OR am i missing something here...
using VS pro 2017 - 15.5.7 , VS Mac plus Xamarin components are all latest stable release versions... WK build for version 4.2