When did you lose track?

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TSandM

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I saw Tammy's post about doing her 1000th dive, and it made me wonder how many dives I have now. I kept a paper log at first, for about the first 220 dives or so. Then I started logging off my computer, and at first, I was using the Suunto Dive Manager software on a laptop which is about three laptops back on computer replacements. Then I bought an Aladin computer and used that software for about 250 dives. I got mad at the number size (old eyes) and got a Vytec, and went back to the Suunto until the computer died, with about 25 undownloaded dives on it. Then I got my X1, and I've used that since. But I've got a ton of dives on old software and old machines, and periodically I go round them up and write down the totals, and then forget them. It all adds up to somewhere between 1200 and 1500, but that's a big range.

Some days I'd like to spend the time to figure it all out and get it right for once and for all; other days, I wonder why I care. I do like to add up my cave dives, because one of these days, I will get my Abe Davis award (Peter already has his).

For those of you whose dive count is getting up there, how much do you care if you know exactly how many dives you have? And if you no longer keep track, when did you give it up?
 
I still log mine in a paper book, and for some reason, it seems important that I keep count. Just a couple of days ago I was packing up some things, and I came across a couple of the old books... got a coffee and sat down for a read. It's always interesting to me to reminisce through the logs, and it's surprising how often I actually remember the individual dive in question as I'm reading about it. A couple of years ago I started printing off the occasional photo and taping that into the book as well. A couple of years before that I took to sketching the dive sites in the book... for me it's like a journal of who I was and what I was doing at various points in my life and my diving career.

One of my best log moments - makes me smile each time I read it - is the entry where I wrote: "FINALLY didn't have that 'oh my god!' moment when I entered the water."
 
all of my "real dives" are logged properly, cave dives, wreck dives, etc. I don't log quarry dives because I liken a quarry to a pool. Now that I have a Petrel, it is going to log those for me, but I easily have 400 dives in the quarries for babysitting training and quick dives with random buddies. Those started within 6 months of my initial certification.

Pre-petrel, I didn't have a cable for my various Niteks, and didn't bother logging the easy dives because it was irritating to go through the computer and put everything in. Subsequently nothing from my whole summer working at SeaCamp is logged, and some others that I don't really care about. All of those dives are basically identical profiles with nothing of interest going on aside from "watched students blow way too many bubbles" so it wasn't worth the effort. Now I guess everything will get logged by the Petrel, so it doesn't hurt to upload everything since it does the work for me. I don't bother recording SAC or anything on the "easy" dives anyway, so there's nothing really to record other than bottom time
 
I still log dives on paper. I used the Suunto log book about a decade ago and quit that pretty quickly. I didn't' see the point in it. On many dives I put next to nothing in the log, but in others I write a lot. To me, the stuff I write is the most valuable, and its easier to scribble it on paper than to pull out a computer. Like Karibelle, I occasionally refer back to old dives.

Another factor is instructing. I make sure to log dives when I instruct. It's pretty unlikely that a student will come back 6 months later and claim something happened on a dive, but if that happens, I want to have some record of that dive in my files.
 
Another factor is instructing. I make sure to log dives when I instruct. It's pretty unlikely that a student will come back 6 months later and claim something happened on a dive, but if that happens, I want to have some record of that dive in my files.

Ditto this. "Dive was uneventful." appears a lot in my book, or if there ARE any issues, I capture those too, so I (hopefully) have enough info to recall a particular situation.
 
Currently trudging writing up 3 log books for the last few months for myself,wife and son. Trudging is the right word. 1 more to go. Ugh


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Currently trudging writing up 3 log books for the last few months for myself,wife and son. Trudging is the right word. 1 more to go. Ugh


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD



Why are you doing it?
 
I'm still logging both my dives (1232) and my wife's dives (753). But I reduced the amount of information down to one line for the location and one line each for our dive data. Depth, times, and gas loading data only. An entire week of diving fits on one piece of paper.
 
I log pretty religiously now, but I did not do so at all until the mid 90's. Somehow I never saw logging as worthwhile when I certified in 70, and it was not until I took a PADI AOW, as a review that I began to see some value in recording things like weight and gear changes, conditions, etc.

So, in reality my early dive count is simply a very rough estimate, and it is for only the last decade + of diving that I have been logging, and for this I do have an accurate accounting of my current experience.
 
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