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Dive Log Sheets

Monday, December 5, 2011

As I started diving doubles and rebreathers I quickly realized that the dive log sheets I have been using for years (literally decades) were no longer really serving me. My main dive buddy had a dive log sheet he had cut and pasted together into a sheet that worked for him, but like me he had many small changes he still wanted to make. While we were on the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster diving in Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary, we sat down after a long day of diving and talked about what each of us wanted out of a dive log sheet. His needs were only slightly different from mine, so I offered to build up a new log sheet with all the things we wanted. For issues of copyright and all that I created the sheets from scratch though I did use existing visual elements where they made sense. After a few iterations we had the sheet both of us needed. We created it mainly for advanced, technical and/or science divers but we also modified it to create a second set of log sheets specifically for the open water class that was taught this fall.

Open Water Dive Log Sheet.Advanced Dive Log Sheet

Open Water and Advanced/Technical/Science Dive Log Sheets - offered under Creative Commons By-NC-SA license. Please refer others to this page to share this version of the sheet.


Both sheets offer:
  • a header with cumulative dive number, date and location information
  • A checkbox list of major dive types/activities
  • Exposure protection & Weight
  • Dive depth, duration, pressure group
  • Start and end tank pressure
  • Air, surface water and depth water temp
  • Visibility, weather and REEF.org fish count information
  • A generous comments section
  • Buddies
  • Cumulative dive times

The Open Water Log Sheets also offer:

  • a small comment section to record dive boat, boat captain, dive master or similar information
  • An instructor / buddy signature block

The Advanced Log Sheets also offer:

  • Dive gas mode block to record dive gases used including size of tank and mix used
  • Tally blocks to track cumulative stats (# dives and hours) for rebreather, the year, and science.

For those that own their own rebreather and want to track cumulative hours on that rebreather unit or cumulative hours since last major service I have a version that replaces dives for the year and sciece dives with cumulative unit rebreather dives and hours.

Both log sheet files print out 2 double sides log sheets per 8.5×11″ page (4 dives per page). The open water file prints 6 open water training dive logs then an additional 14 log sheets for normal dives, though more sheets can be printed easily. Please feel free to use these files for your own diving or diving program. I do ask that if you do use them, please leave a comment here, and if you find them really useful put a donation in the tip jar. I am willing to modify these files for special purposes, and as the files are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA license you may modify the files yourself as long as you share the resulting file yourself.

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Journey to the Deep

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Jan. 23, 1960: Journey to the Deepest Place on Earth: “Its dive into the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the trench, was made, according to a Navy press release, ‘to demonstrate that the United States possesses the capability for manned exploration of the sea down to the deepest part of its floor.’”

(Via Wired.com)

For me that’s a very cool thing to have had happen on your birthday. Unfortunately even today, 48 years later, much of the world ocean remains largely unexplored. It’s expensive and potentially very dangerous, but unlike space exploration there is little attention paid to it beyond the community of scientists and explorers that are directly involved. Almost half a century ago today we reached the very bottom of the seas, the deepest spot (relative to sea level), ironically as we remember the first man to reach the highest spot on earth (again relative to sea level), a feat achieved only 7 years prior to the Challenger Deep dive. I love the fact that if everest were somehow dumped into the Mariana Trench at the Challenger Deep, it would still have over two kilometers of blue ocean above it.

While not much of an exploration, as a bit of a birthday present to myself, I will get an orientation class on a rebreather our DSO got ahold of for tomorrow. How awesome would it be to do long term mangrove and reef behavior studies and transects with no bubbles influencing the animals.

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Knocking the Rust off.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

One of the classes for this semester is a one credit class that will end with me being approved for and certified as an AAUS diver. I’m fortunate that the instructor is a very accomplished diver and the incoming president of the AAUS. While it’s only a one credit class, it has been in many ways my most demanding class, especially in a physical sense.

It started with the swim test, which was quite an eye opener to how out of shape I have managed to get, even with the commuting. Mom was a fish, and I sure love the water, so although I passed the test, I was surprised at how hard it had gotten. Fortunately we are planning on getting a YMCA membership to teach Johann to swim this winter. I will have to use some of the YMCA time to work on improving my own swim fitness.

I probably came into this class a little overconfident in my abilities. I have over 100 dives under my belt, and while I was not rescue or dive master certified, I am a fairly accomplished diver. It has been quite a bit since my last dive, so I requested a check out dive. Smartest thing I could have done, as my first dive in Long Island Sound (LIS) was a disaster. Except two quarry dives long ago, I hadn’t dove in water cooler than 21C (about 70F). My dive suits have generally consisted of thin abrasion suits and thin (2-3mm) exposure suits with no hood. Here in LIS, though, I need a 6mm farmer john, with a 6mm step through jacket and hood to stay warm. 12mm of torso insulation! Not a situation I am used to, and I wasn’t really prepared for either.

Of course this was the first time I have ever done this level of cold. The suit I checked out was actually too small and had disastrous results on that first dive. Since the suit was too tight and more constrictive than I predicted, it felt as though I couldn’t fill my lungs at all. On the surface I was a mess, but as soon as I got under the water I felt much much better.

The visibility was (is) pathetic! To think I used to label anything with less than 50′ visibility as poor vis! All relative I guess, but now I’m happy to have 5′ visibility. One of the AAUS requirements is Search And Rescue trainng …so on one dive we did searches for an unconscious diver under water. With visibility literally 0 feet, it was quite a chore to accomplish, but fortunately my buddy and I managed to do it within the alloted time. The area we were operating in had lots of fine silt on the bottom, which was getting all churned up with no current to carry it away. I could not at any time see what I was doing and had to do it all by feel. I could only tell if something was above me or not by the color of the soup I was swimming through.

Fortunately, over the past few weeks all the old skills have returned and I really am enjoying freezing my you-know-what off. The last dive we did was on an old P-47 wreck for more search and recovery work, along with tracking pingers under water. I had a blast even though there were some minor equipment issues. Note to self: Always always carry the EMT shears!

Those last two dives really brought it back to me how important it is to be comfortable and familiar with your gear. I had a BC I loved, but unfortunately, it seems to have shrunk, and the bladder needs to be replaced. On that BC everything had a place: knife, scissors, light, whistle, etc. I knew instinctively where each piece of gear was and how it needed to be accessed and adjusted. While the dive locker gear works well, it isn’t my gear and I can’t set it up like I like it, since it is used by a wide range of people of varying skill levels.

It looks like I will be doing a few working dives in the next weeks, as a number of labs are bringing up the fall’s experiments before the winter sets in. Soon it will be getting into dry suit weather!!! Another new experience…

Of course this last dive also had a new experience…sort of. There were many Lions Mane jellies (Cyanea capillata) in the water and someone ahead of me must have swam through one because I caught tentacles on my ear, lips, neck and arm. Those nematocycts stay viable for quite a while too — 30 minutes after the dive I got new stings on my upper arm when I was getting out of the wetsuit. Never kiss a jelly. I have done it with two species now (also a Cassiopea spp. in Belize). While it is very…um…stimulating, it’s not worth it!

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