When did you lose track?

[gitterdun]

I still log all of my dives on paper, as well as in my "Bloggy Thing." - (Online Diving Bloggy Thing). Sometimes, I get a little behind, but I always catch up.

As someone else wrote, earlier, I start fresh, every year, and take the older entries out of my actual log book, keeping them in an archive. Besides going back and looking through the logs, I also like to go back and see what undergarment I was wearing, in "this" water temperature, what the water temps were at "this" time of the year, when the water froze over, who I was diving with, at the time, the date that the water thawed, what temperature it was, when we headed back down to the river, whose boat we were on, and little details, that I may have forgotten, through the years.

The list goes on, but I really do enjoy going back through my logs, and see all of the past (and present) Goodness.

 

[PfcAJ]

I stopped logging about a year after I got certified (2001). I wish I hadn't stopped. I picked back up with logging cave dives a few years ago and I find it quite helpful to look back on those dives to help plan future excursions.

 

[gitterdun]

I do enjoy going back and reading the paper log I kept at the beginning. Some of the entries are just delightful, like the one where I passed Fundies, where I drew flowers and fireworks all over the page!

*Note To Self* Get out markers and stickers, for certain achievements.

Don't laugh, but I actually do have stickers and pictures on some of my entries.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I do enjoy going back and reading the paper log I kept at the beginning. Some of the entries are just delightful, like the one where I passed Fundies, where I drew flowers and fireworks all over the page!

I haven't done so in a while, but I always enjoyed reading your journal of your Open Water class. Were it not for that we might never have met.

I still keep a dive log ... which will hit 3400 dives on my upcoming trip to the Red Sea. I probably have 100 more dives than are in that log, because I do tend to miss some sometimes. And then there's the time spent underwater that I choose not to log ... like OW and Rescue classes ... because I don't consider those real dives. I keep my log on my home computer ... each dive a small table in a Word document. It's mostly just so I can go back and find out when I was at a particular place ... and to help me keep a running tally of how much of my life I've spent underwater.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[boulderjohn]

2) Divers that do not log tend to have more dives than those that do log dives.

A former frequent poster on ScubaBoard used to say that when a person who does not log dives tells you how many dives they have, the reality will be at least a third less, and probably more. That's impossible to prove, of course, but I believe it, and I don't think people are intentionally lying. It sure feels to me that I have a whole lot more dives than the reality that number on the page gives me.

 

[gbf]

Kept a paper log up until all was destroyed in a house fire. I quit cave diving and logging at the same time. The logs were mostly for directions, things like "Turn right by the green house trailer..." or "walk about 100 yds into the woods where that big oak tree used to be". Also directions as to where to tie off and how to find the entrance in the sinkholes.

Directions to many (what were then) little/un- known karst windows were lost.

 

[boat sju]

. . . when Aeris, out of the blue, decided to no longer support their on-line dive log function and deleted my log that I'd had on their web site for about 8 years.

 

[rwkosh]

I stopped logging them in the mid 70's. I left the paper logbooks in a friend's garage when I did an overseas duty station change in the Marine Corps and never bothered to pick them up again. I kind of wish I could find them and read through them now, but they're long gone. I've begun to log them on a computer again for the last couple of years, just to keep some kind of record of temperature trends and how much weight I used with various exposure garments, but I really have no idea how many total dives I've done--nor do I really care.

 

[chillyinCanada]

By the time, I finally quit logging for good, I'd become a warm water wuss and travel to dive. There are a number of dive trips per year and i have record of those trips. It would be difficult for me to over-estimate by 1/3. Also was in competition with a buddy for a few years and he was dive traveling more than me. He logged his dives and that helped me keep my numbers in line. He was winning but then slowed up for a couple of years which allowed me to pass him. Worse comes to worst, at a bare minimum I'm within a few dives of him (but i know it's 75 more and climbing)

What is far more important to me is that there is improvement on every dive and every trip.

 

[NFLFan92]

I would like to turn the question around a little and ask those that do log religiously what it is that they get out of it?

Craig

I religiously log all my dives (218 to date) and I will answer Craig's question of what I get out of it. I log my location, weather conditions, air and water temp, max and average depth, visibility, air consumption, bottom time and write 3 or 4 sentences about each dive like what we saw, compass bearing to points of interest etc. and its almost become a journal of my scuba diving. There are dive locations I don't get to every year so the log is very helpful to look back and check my notes about the site before you go back to jog your memory or make notes of changes to the site.

I also keep all my cert cards in my logbook and keep track of all gear maintenance (when regs overhauled/tanks due for inspections/fresh batteries put in dive lights/when I bought gear) all my weight configurations (if I'm diving 7mm or 14mm of neoprene, using my pony bottle, diving aluminum or steel tanks) as well as dive buddies phone numbers and email addresses in my logbook. I have also scanned each dive into a pdf file I keep on my laptop and in my email just in case they ever got lost.

In short, I guess I get a lot out of logging dives and I enjoy looking back at it from time to time