Best Way To Log Dives?

[jeckyll]

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Living in Florida we are fortunate to be able to dive pretty much year round so I will note things like water temps, wet suit used at different times of year etc. I also like to make notes on visability or anything else interesting that I may wish to visit again.

TOM

I pretty much dive year round, just in a drysuit. Still, the number of layers you wear underneath vary and with that, the amount of lead. I track my exposure protection and lead to ensure that when I dive in those conditions next I'm propperly weighted

 

[ClayJar]

Procedure-wise, when I gear up, I write my starting pressure on a slate. When I exit, I write my ending pressure on the slate. I often don't write out the complete log until later in the day (or later than that, occasionally), but other than starting and ending pressures, I don't have a problem.

The one thing I really like about my logging is that I created my own custom logbook pages. They're geared specifically toward the way I dive, the information I want to log, and how I log that information. Oh, and I can print as many as I want whenever I want. (Feel free to print up as many as you want from the PDF, if they suit you, and if they don't, the OpenOffice.org file from which I created the PDF is there for you to modify at will.)

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(I find that I'm a much better logger now that I use my own pages. I suppose convenience breeds verbosity. )

 

[mudchick]

ClayJar, that is slick! I've saved the pdf. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Jon C]

I log them all. When I go solo, I make a note to that effect. Otherwise I chase down my buddy and get their autograph. It has become more of a habit than an obsession...yes, there is a difference.

I note the starting PSI at the beginning, the water temp during and the ending PSI on a slate.

When I get home, I religiously wash out my gear and about that time I take a few minutes to get off my feet, catch a ball game, and complete my log entries.

I always have a reference book for "California Reef Fish" and another on invertebrates and note which ones I saw.

I firmly believe 100 years from now, someone will read my logs and say, "...there were fish back then?" 1000 years from now someone will say "...tanks? Why didn't he just use his gills?" 10,000 years from now some alien will be saying, "GNX LUXCI EDSGD FRIONUS GEEWK" (...look the humans used to go scubadive...too bad we vaporized them all"):alien_2:
Jon

 

[boulderjohn]

I, too, am designing my own custom pages. I am about half done--haven't worked on it in a while.

What I will end up putting in it are the things I find myself writing in the margins now. That includes things like the thickness of my wet suit, average depth, O2%, altitude, etc. I wil also include the dive operator I used, and what I thought of them.

When I go back and look at past dives, I am interested in the amount of wet suit I needed for the conditions, the amount of weight I wore and how I felt about it, etc. On most of my dives, it is pretty much the same, but when I go into new conditions and use new equipment, I take note of it. It might be a year or more before I dive similar conditoins, and I may want to check back to see how I did it the last time.

I also look back on past dives if I am going to an area again for the first time in a while, so I can see what I thought of different sites. Maybe I thought something was a waste of time then, so I won't waste my time again this trip.

 

[Hoyden]

I download info from my computer and/or Sensus Ultra into Scubasehttp://www.scubase.net/ and then print pages for my log book. You can design your own pages and include just info you want.

Jackie

 

[CompuDude]

My Uwatec computer is AI, so it does 90% of the work for me. Plus, it beams the logs over infrared to software in my Treo, which I bring with me on all but the smallest boats (in a pelican box of course). In between dives, I fill in the blanks: buddy name, size tank used (needed for the AI software to determine SAC), visibility, any interesting critters that I didn't take photos of, anything else of note, etc., using the little keyboard on the Treo.

I generally dive the exact same gear setup, since I own all my gear and usually dive locally, but if anything changes I'll not that, like wet or dry, how much weight, what thickness of wetsuit, etc., so I can dial in all my settings for future use. If I was underweighted, etc. I'll note that too. This way, next time I dive a jacket BC in a caribbean shorty using an aluminum 80, I'll know how much weight to bring, and when I'm in cold water switching between wet and dry suits, using a faber HP100 tank vs. a Worthington hp130, I'll likewise know how much weight to pull off or add onto my belt.

Later, as I go through my dive photos, I'll supplement the "critters seen" in the logs.

I'll also note what boat I'm on and if there is anything noteworthy there, or which shore entry location I'm using if beach diving.

Realistically, it only takes about a minute per dive, depending on how many critters I saw, because most of my diving is done under pretty similar conditions so a lot carries forward, and simple changes are picked off picklists in the AquaDiveLog software on the Treo.

Every few weeks, I import the ADL records into the SmartTrak software on my PC to complete the cycle, and sometimes add in a bit more info with the options available to me in the more full-featured software.

One of these days I'll print it all out onto log sheets of somesort and put together a portable book for long-distance travel, but meanwhile I always have my phone with me so it's very easy to look up a little bit of trivia (who was I with last time I dove Catalina, and on which boat?) in a heartbeat. And since it's all backed up in multiple locations (dive computer to phone software, phone software to desktop computer, desktop computer to backup disks, phone software to computer software, computer software to backup disks), the changes of ever losing everything are extremely slim... far lower than if I was using paper log books.

 

[GLENFWB]

Thanks for all the great information all of you gave. Now, all I have to do is get busy diving so I have something to log!

 

[k4man]

while I don't have thousands of dives, I still try to have a buddy sign (usually with a volunteer email for future dives) I have found, especially if doing multiple dives, logging them makes the surface interval go by much quicker.

This isn't always practical, for example on a boat, but on shore it's great.

 

[LowVizWiz]

I use Suunto's Dive Manager software to log my dives.
Besides logging what I saw, who my buddy was and other general info. my main concern these days is improving my sac rate (I'm a vaccum) so I can keep track of improvements in that area. Also I can review my entire dive in 10 sec. intervals. I can verify if I did as well as I thougth or not in my bouyancy. These are all areas that I'm working on getting better at so I make notes after looking at the charts the software gives me and compare them with the impressions I have during the dive and it gives me a better overall picture of how I'm doing underwater.


Hope this helps!
Wys.