New Dive Logs!
It’s official: the newest version of our Spartan Scuba and Dive Team logbook is now available for purchase!
After using our basic ‘test version’ for the past year, we took the feedback from our divers in the wild and retooled both the log pages as well as the sheet of dive forumlas. The logbook still features the ability to document 100 dives, with one dive per page and plenty of room to write, as well as a pre and post dive log goals and achievements pages.
Do you log dives?
Blowing bubbles for the better part of a decade I am constantly struck by the number of divers I meet who DON’T log their dives. “It’s in my computer,” is the most common reason given from most ‘non-loggers’.
I get it. Who has the time to sit and write out everything that’s already contained on a computer? But is everything being logged?
The proof is in the details!
...why on earth did you do that?
Who, what, when, where, why.
Your dive log is a journal, which kind of makes you a ‘journal-ist’… right? That means that your log should contain each of the five-W’s in order to acurately document the experience.
Without going into too much detail, each of these areas can be fleshed out in whatever length your log and vocaublary permit. Who you went diving with, where you dived, to how deep and how long are the basics. But did you have any issues? What sort of gas and tanks did you dive? Steel 100’s with 32%, or a steel 120 on your back with an aluminum 80 filled with 60% strapped to your chest like a beast? And WHY ON EARTH did you do that?
How do you fine tune your trim if your weight is perfect, but you don’t know how you split up that 28 pounds? Did you move fives up to the trim pockets on the back and find yourself struggling to keep your nose out of the fish pit at 30 feet? How much was on your weight belt compared to in your BCD ditchable weight pockets?
Basically, it’s tough to go back and determine the specifics of your entire dive, including gear setup, without writing it down!
If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen.
I spent a great deal of time in my 22 years of medical practice coaching other providers. While you may think being a doctor is mostly helping people, the truth is most of our time is spent documenting everything: what was said, what was seen, tested, or felt, what we thought about the encounter and the progress, what EXACTLY we did about it all, and what we plan to do next. If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is!
If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen.
As an instructor I use your logged dives as evidence of your experience. Rescue diver requires 15 logged dives; divemaster requires 60!
Thinking about taking your adventure up to the level of instructor? The prerequisites there call for “proof of 100 logged dives completed in a number of different environments with varying depths“. How else are you going to give testement to your dive experience if you haven’t written it down?
Note that the standards state “logged” dives, not “suspected” or “computed”.
Not everyone follows the rules.
Nope. Not now and likley not ever. There will always be shops and instructors out there who will just slap a certification on a diver because they took them at their word, or saw them dive (once), or had the money to pay for the course on them… in cash. I’ve seen it happen to someone I used to dive with regularly and while I truly believed he deserved the certification, the way he got it (DM and solo diver over a three day weekend) was not.
That will never be the way Spartan Scuba does things. Every single certification will follow the rubric set forth by the agency standards designed for that course. I won’t apologize for that, and neither will anyone else on our instructional team. We believe that just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and that the harder you train, the easier your diving will be.
To log or not to log... that is the question.
At the end of the day, whether you log your dives or not is a personal issue. Some divers are just there for the moment in time and not looking to advance their skills or do much other than drift along the reef in Mexico. There is NOTHING wrong with that life!
Your PDC can keep track of each and every time you touch the water, and if that’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me…
…unless you want to take a class. 😈
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