What does "Dive Planning" mean to you?

[Eric Sedletzky]

Dive planning for me starts the minute the thought enters my mind that I want to go diving.

Who do I call to go with me if I want to buddy dive?
Assembly of gear, making sure I didn't forget anything.
What size tanks I will use for the location picked.
Studying the tides and swell model.
Sometimes I'll make a phone call to a dive shop on the coast for a first hand report.
If diving with someone else, coming up with a plan wether we will stick together or if we are OK with separating and finishing our dives solo.
There are other planning proceedures involving the the actual diving, turn pressure, compass heading, gas management, a bottom line tank pressure when the guns get put away, emergency proceedures, etc. but this is a good start.

 

[boulderjohn]

As several have said, the kind of planning you need to do depends upon the site you will be diving. When I visited Peter and Lynn in Seattle, we definitely looked at tides, but that is the only time in my life I have had to give tides a thought. If Peter and Lynn were to visit me and dive in Colorado or New Mexico (which I doubt will ever happen), we will have a discussion about altitude, which will be the first time in they will consider it in their lives.

The need to plan for gas usage also varies by the site.

As I believe intentionally is implied by your question, I agree that these variables in dive planning are insufficiently taught by almost all agencies at the recreational level, for they believe that a lot of it is only for technical diving. I agree that too many recreational divers are too dependent upon others to tell them what to do. That is why I created a Dive Planner distinctive specialty, which has been approved by PADI. I have offered the outline freely to instructors around the world, and many have taken it.

When we discuss dive planning in OW classes, I have had students tell me that friends who are already certified have told them dive planning is unnecessary, for you just have to follow the DM when you dive. I think every instructor needs to disabuse students of that notion.

 

[Scott]

I give zero thought to tides but have considerable thought when it comes to altitude. Some sites we have to ascend 6000 feet to reach, others decend a couple thousand. Each determines our arrival and departure time. All part of the planning process.

Emergency plans are site dependant. A few commercial sites have O2, while at least one does not. Remote sites could have EMS as close as 20 minutes or an hour or more by helicopter. Some sites have good cell coverage, some do not. For those that do not, everyone knows where they need to drive to for coverage.

What is adequate planning? In simplest form, who, what, when, where and why. I'm a checklist guy. When it comes to the actual dive planning it is on a slate.

I no longer log dives on paper, but I do download them to my PC. I will check dives that were not the usual and ignore the more common dives.

 

[Rhone Man]

My dives tend to follow a pretty settled routine, so the main part of the planning involves ever more creative excuses to give my wife.

 

[j2s]

Every factor I can think of that may effect the dive; Equipment, 'buddy', external, internal, enviormental etc. and I've been logging dives in detail for years ie: What went wrong/right, could've been better, equipment changes etc...Do it as soon as I can after the dive....Interesting to see what I wrote compared to remembered years later.......

 

[Searcaigh]

Planning is variable depending on the "usual" sites I dive, but some amount of planning does go into each dive.

All of my dives are logged on paper, use a "current" log book for the current year and archive all of my older pages.

 

[blue sky]

Yes -- although typically it is just "dial 911 on the cell phone" or, in the case of diving off our small boat, "Don't get hurt and if you do, I'll probably have to drag you somewhere cause I won't be able to get you into the boat!"

Seriously, I worry about that. I've been thinking about how to make a block and tackle rig to get a buddy back in the boat.

 

[Kingpatzer]

It depends on the dive being planned.

 

[RonFrank]

Our local diving involves deciding what to do if we miss our target for example there is a plane we may try and land on.

Our semi local dives involve deciding which direction we are diving, clockwise, counter clockwise.

If we are diving Rock lake we will need decide how deep we are going. We are rec divers, so 130F is as deep as I go.

On vacation I generally pay close attention to the DM. If I am doing a shore dive sometimes a bit more work is involved like is there current and where is it running.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Seriously, I worry about that. I've been thinking about how to make a block and tackle rig to get a buddy back in the boat.

When I had a boat I used to worry about that exact thing.
I've had some pretty big boys on my boat, in excess of 300 pounds.
In fact I didn't even have a ladder or swim step. It required a person to be able to grab the gunwale and pull themselves up and into the boat using their fins as propulsion. They didn't have a tank or weightbelt on, the rig was clipped off to an equipment line and we would reach up and dump the weighbelts into the boat before we attempted to get in..
You'd be surprised at how many people had too much around the middle with really weak upper bodies and could barely do this.
I remember in one case we had to get one guy back in the water pushing on the rear end of the big guy trying to get into the boat and another guy up top pulling like hell.

Actually, maybe people aren't surprised given the average condition of peoples' body composition in America these days.

When thinking about it, I guess this determined who I would ask to go diving off my boat and thus became part of the dive plan.