When you are done a day of fun, exhilarating dives, maybe you had the opportunity to see some wildlife you had never seen before on a dive or dove with a new dive buddy. Also, there is something to be said for the amount of satisfaction I get from filling out my dive log. Seeing my dive count go up and reliving some of my incredible experiences are just some of the reasons to have a dive log.
Do you need a dive log?
The short answer is yes! A dive log is needed in your dive career for several reasons. First, a dive log will be necessary if you plan to pursue further diving training, as some courses have a prerequisite number of dives to qualify to take a course. A dive log is beneficial if you’re not a regular diver. If you want to keep track of how much weight you need to, dive in salt water instead of freshwater. Or keep track of equipment changes that have improved your dive experience thickness of the wetsuit you like for a particular temperature. PADI Open Water Diver provides a dive log because it is necessary, but more so at the start of your dive career, and I’ll tell you why that may be as we read on.
A dive log is only as good as the information you put in it. These are just the necessary information you need to have a functional dive log:
Dive count
Dive site and conditions
Dive buddy
Equipment dove with
Kind of dive.
And a journal area.
These are just the necessary information you should keep in your dive log. Whether you should keep a paper dive log like the one that came with your crew pack in the open water diver course or whether you can use the one that came with your dive computer are just some of the things we will cover in this article.
I feel the dive log is a very understated tool in our dive kit bag. I often find that novice divers will eagerly log each dive as soon as it ends and enter all the information they can remember right away because they want to capture as much of the experience as possible. Then there are those experienced divers with over 1000 dives under their belt. They just trust the log their computer keeps at the end of each dive and periodically sync their dive computer with their home PC to keep the dive count going but never really enter any other information.
I fell into both these categories in my dive career. I would meticulously log each dive and all the details until I got a Dive computer with digital logs. I trust my dive computer was logging each dive. The computer that I was using had space for 35 dives.
Before I exceeded the memory, I would sync my computer, but I often couldn’t remember much of the dives I had been on. Was there a change to my equipment that dive? What dive did I use my spare canister light? Did I dive with my stage bottle, or was that whole dive from my back gas?
I would find that I often would forget some detail from the dives because I waited to write my log, and some information was lost.
This worked fine for a while, and I would back up my dive log to my personal computer each time, hoping that there was a permanent record backed up should there be a problem.
That is until there was a problem, at around my 300 dive mark, after doing my typical routine syncing the dive computer backing up the log and running off to do more dive my pc crashed and had a primary failure to my dive computer which required it to need servicing.
The major problem was that the digital dive log that I backed up on my PC was mainly gone. So I could only recover approximately 150 of my dives, and even those dive logs only had the data that the computer logs and most of my notes were gone along the remaining 150 dives were lost. I was devastated.
This is when I appreciated the value of having a paper dive log when I looked back at my first 50 dives when I would take the time to try and write each detail of the dive. As I read the detail that I would write, what I noticed brought me some absolute joy and helped me vividly remember a dive that maybe the memory had blurred into the college that all the dive blended into. So for me, this was an invaluable experience in rediscovery the importance of having a writer dive log.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t gone to only a written dive log, not at all. However, I still use and love my digital log, and more than ever, I make a point to take detailed notes at the end of each dive, knowing that there will be times when I am landlocked and reading over my log help weather the dry spell.
It’s also beneficial to look back at the logbook when you track the equipment you use to see if you’re getting good life out of a particular piece of equipment. For example, did it fail after ten dives, or when a piece of equipment fails that you have had so long you don’t even remember buying it? Again, it’s helpful to flip through the log and see, “oh, I bought this 110 dives ago”.
My routine now is to keep 3 logs. I’ll typically write all the details in my digital log and back it up. I use a cloud-based dive log app that syncs directly with my dive computer. This log I try to keep it as accurate as possible. My dive computer log also happens to be cloud-based as I just upgraded to a shearwater. I haven’t entered much information in that one as I used it mainly to collect the dive-specific data ( dive time, dive depth temperature SAC). Then usually, once a week, depending on how much I am diving on a break at work, I’ll go through my digital log app and enter all the information into my paper log for safekeeping. That way, there is a slim chance I’ll lose 100’s of dives again because of a dive computer failure or hard drive crash. The app also has a print dive log feature if you just print them out on paper and place them in a binder.
That begs the question: what dive log should you use? there are a lot of different logs out there you can even come up with your own, but one I highly recommend and enjoy using and I feel has great value is: CLICK HERE
It’s a nice size to keep your certification card in and any Insurance papers.
It’s water resistant, which is ideal for being in your gear bag
Pretty rugged in construction, so it should last.
Dive log app
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/dive-log/id301049600
This app is robust with tons of features and will sync with most computers. I feel the price they are asking offers tremendous value, and the in-app purchases that unlock other features like dive computer syncing.
When you’re diving regularly and not planning on doing any training because you are content with where you’re diving is, there isn’t much chance of change to your equipment set up because you have it dialled in the way you like. I understand that logging each dive may not be high on the priority list. But just as I learnt that having a dive log and taking the time to fill it out brings me a lot of satisfaction in reliving the dive, thinking about how that day played out who you dove with are all great memories and a great memory for me a huge part of why I dive. So that is why I feel like you do need a dive log. There is nothing else like diving, in my opinion, so why not write down your experience, never know who you might get to share it with a child, spouse, buddy or better yet, share it with your grandkids when you get older, and you have no memory you will be glad you wrote it down.
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