Dive Logs

[Sludge]

No man ever said on his deathbed, "I wish I had spent more time at work."

And I've never heard a diver say, "I wish I had stopped logging my dives at some point."

[lamont]

It's an idea that sounds good as a means to promote currency but it probably does not work as well as intended in actual practice. For example, if you go back and fill in the details in an electronic log "after awhile" then after awhile it stops becoming a log and becomes more of a creative writing excercise.

Yes, I doubt all the details are correct, but I can prove X number of full cave dives.

I'm not big on diaries or logs or anything like that, and if I can't remember the details of a site or cave, that just means that I should dive it more until I do remember the details.

[Sas]

Here's the best reason to NOT log your dives: you get a lot more dives that way.

Haha I have noticed exactly that. I have been diving for nearly two and a half years and have logged my dives in great detail. I now have 391 dives/406 hours underwater (though only 30 in caverns/caves) which I thought was quite a bit! Because I dive a lot people often ask me how many dives I've done and a fair few times I have gotten 'is that all?' One approximately 40 year old man told me he had over 15k dives since he was 12 yet he only does 30-50 dives a year. :S Common thing I see with people who don't log their dives but to each their own and if it makes them happy to estimate that many dives then whatever

I love and hate logging my dives. I love it after the fact for nostalgia purposes and also just how much info I have gathered but I find the process tedious. My logs always include:
-Site info (see below)
-weather (been very useful for ocean dives, and I nearly always have somewhere to dive now regardless of the weather)
-tide info/currents/surge/viz
-depth/time all that stuff
-kind of a journal entry about the dive overall
-air pressure/gas consumption/mix
-deco info
-exact details of what I'm wearing, weighting, placement of weights, any equipment issues
-creatures I've seen
-type of dive (i.e. night, photography, cave, recreational, training, etc).
-buddy details if applicable

For every site I've done too I have done a write up with the following info: GPS coordinates (found this really handy for cave sites as I always get lost finding them!), min/max depth, address, weather required, access (both into the site and any other things like picking up keys), facilities at the site and a general description. I also have a map with notations for each site as well from google earth, cave survey maps and so on. Me and my buddy work together on these.

All of it is electronic so I just have to tick things like sites and gear off lists normally then put in a little description for each section, and then link it to the dive's photos.

My overall goal is to eventually make a comprehensive webpage for local divers to get info from so I guess that and reminiscing are my main goals.

[Sludge]

min/max depth

I quit doing this after several hundred times of writing Minimum Depth: zero.

[Sas]

I quit doing this after several hundred times of writing Minimum Depth: zero.

Haha ok Let me rephrase then - 'minimum depth where there is something interesting to see'

[FW]

Haha ok Let me rephrase then - 'minimum depth where there is something interesting to see'

Depending on the dive, that number could be higher than the maximum depth

[mdax]

I've not been happy with my dive log. It's great for recording dive information but didn't have a space for dive planning. So i wrote the owner of dive-logs and he's agreed to modify my custom log format with a block for planning gas volume, o2 exposure and nitrogen planning info.

Here's my mock up of what they're printing on rite in the rain paper at the dive-logs smaller log size.



now if i could just make some progress on a tactile pressure gauge i'd be content....for now

[FW]

....now if i could just make some progress on a tactile pressure gauge i'd be content....for now

There used to be tactile SPGs. They worked like a tire gauge. The more pressure, the farther an indicator stuck out. You could tell how much gas you had left by feel. Too bad they don't make them anymore. They were great in low vis situations.

[Merlin Rhoda]

I logged my first ~ 400 dives in a paper log book, then for a few years I didn't log dives at all, and then I bought a Sensus... If I wait too long to download then my entries are skimpy on details, but I'm good about at least logging the location/depth/time/buddy/mix.

I sometimes wish I'd kept a running tally of "real" dives vs. open water teaching dives.

[jlillest]

There used to be tactile SPGs. They worked like a tire gauge. The more pressure, the farther an indicator stuck out. You could tell how much gas you had left by feel. Too bad they don't make them anymore. They were great in low vis situations.

Sounds like a tactile gauge could come in handy as a backup alongside a regular SPG. I just did my first ever dives in a halocline, and for about half the dive I couldn't make out anything clear, including my SPGs right next to my mask. I suspect that the halocline was more mixed and turbulent than most and I certainly hope that they're not all like that!

So was it a too expensive and not enough being purchased scenario that made them disappear from the shelves?