When you first started diving, your instructors taught you to log all your dives. A typical entry consists of the dive location, date, time, duration of the dive, depth, water temperature, wetsuit with thickness, equipment, and other facts relevant to the dive. Like if that suit was suitable for that water temp if your foot cramped up with the fins you used and other items like that.  

As we went away from diving, there are a lot of old skills and habits that have been lost. Also, as we start to use more advanced items in the water from sonar to Heads Up Dive Computers some of the necessary skills have been lost. Lastly, as we go longer durations in-between dives, it is a great idea to write stuff down, so you will remember how you had your gear set up the last time you did it. This can go for all the training that you do.  

Document your number of dives. With technology today you can use your dive watch, and it does all the work for you. I think every dive company has an app that you can download your dive and add the other information you might want to remember. You will also be required to have a certain number of dives or a certain amount of a specific type of dives if you’re going to achieve different levels in the civilian dive world. Also, in most organizations, a minimum number of dives are required for you to keep your pay. If you ever have to prove you have dove, this can help.

By recording the equipment, your log can quickly become a reference to see how much weight you’ll need to descend in a given wetsuit. If you dive in various locations around the world, and in various climates, a dive log takes the guessing out of the equation. Remember to take into account what you are doing and wearing. If the last time you dove you had a 3lb sludge on your back and this time you don’t this will remind you. It never hurts to keep a paper logbook, so you can write in it and store it with your dive gear this way it is always there if needed. Lastly, write down if you had a problem with a piece of equipment. It’s easy to use something once a year and forget that you had a problem with it. Let’s say you had Nav Board that labeled as #3 and it needs to be replaced. So, when you are on deployment, and you go to dive, and you get Nav Board #3 you know to make sure it works, and it doesn’t have the same issues that it had before. Some people get very detailed in their log books others just write the necessary info down. That is up to you as long as you can look back and remember what info will help you out later. Lastly, you don’t have to use a particular book you can use anything as long as you are saving the same info.

Here is a great one, available from www.violentlittle.com/products/people-to-kill-notebook.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 12th, 2019 at 14:00 and is filed under Advertiser, Guest Post, Maritime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.