Rescue Dive. To log or not?

[TMHeimer]

I think it comes down to the fact that after one has reached some number of dives, 500 or 1000 or whatever, keeping a count of the total number of dives one has done seems to matter less and less. When you have only done 20 dives in your life, every incremental dive is a big deal, and it naturally matters to you whether it "counts" or not.

Yes, if you discount OCD......they could matter MORE and......MORE!!!!!!

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I've know too many divers who would surface for ten minutes and then finish off a tank just to count two dives toward their next certification. I know one diver who counted ten dives per day during her rescue course. That explains why so many instructors claim to have 5000 dives. You can put whatever you want in your logbook. At the end of the day you only have to answer to yourself if you've really made that many dives. I only count dives I've made for my own enjoyment. No skills practice dives, no class dives, no pool dives and no anchor retrievals.

 

[boulderjohn]

At the end of the day you only have to answer to yourself if you've really made that many dives. I only count dives I've made for my own enjoyment. No skills practice dives, no class dives, no pool dives and no anchor retrievals.

You seem to be implying that the purpose of a logbook is to arrive at a certain number of logged dives. It is indeed true that some courses require a certain number of dives to BEGIN the course, but that is really a meaningless metric because what counts is what you are able to do during the course, not what you did or did not do before the course began.

In contrast to your practice, I ALWAYS include class dives, but not because the number of dives I do is important. It is because that record and my comments about what happened during that dive MIGHT be helpful should the student somehow claim there was a problem during the dive that could lead to liability. Even if I were not to consider that important, I am not sure why a class dive does not count. If I am doing a Trimix class dive to 300 feet using a rich helium mix for bottom gas, a light helium mix for travel and early decompression, and two decompression gases for shallow decompression--a dive taking two hours or more--why is that not worthy of being logged?

 

[Diver0001]

This is a key reason why I don't bother with computer dive logging but rely on old-fashioned paper logging instead. As an instructor, I end up doing a whole lot of little dives to set up and break down equipment. As a technical diver I often do similar dives. For example, last weekend I did 5-6 "dives" setting up ascent/descent lines, staging decompression bottles, picking up spent bottles, etc. My computer considers each one a separate dive; I don't. If I were to use the computer dive log, I would have to take the time to go in and override everything manually, which is a PITA. I prefer to open my log book at the end of the day and jot down what I did in a way that makes sense to me.

The Rescue Course is one of the rare moments when the students have the same problem. You just combine several dives in a way that makes sense. PADI says to combine things into two dives. If that makes sense to you, then go with it.

On the other hand, if it does not make sense to you, do something else. It's YOUR logbook. There are no laws involved. The scuba police are not going to go over it like immigration officials inspecting the passport of a suspected terrorist. Do what is meaningful for you. It seems to me that what you did in your rescue class should be in the logbook in some way, but others may disagree. It's their right.

I know exactly what you mean. there have been quite a few days that my computer has done 6 dives but *I* have only done 2. I'm going to admit here that I don't log dives anymore. I haven't for years. I know roughly how many "fun" dives I make in a year (about 75) and I don't count training dives at all even though that would easily double the count. Good chance that I've done about 2500 dives in my career.

What I do still keep track of is the number of staged decompression dives, since I'm a relatively new technical diver. I've now made 484 staged decompression dives as of last Tuesday. Of that I'm sure. If I've made 2500 total dives, I'm not so sure.... but I keep track of them like I keep track of hours at my work..... the real number is bound to be higher because I would die of embarrassment if it were lower.

R..

 

[Skulmoski]

According to the PADI manual, the two rescue scenarios should be logged as two dives. Is does not matter whether they are shorted than the minimum 20min usually required to log a dive

I agree. If you dive, it is logged as a dive. I log not to accumulate dives, but to accumulate information. If it is a short dive but noteworthy, then I log it. I once had trouble equalizing and got to 5 m after about 4 minutes. The dive leader sent me back up. I did not log the dive. Nothing noteworthy to mention. During my rescue course, I was up and down (3 to 5 m) many times but only logged 2 dives over the full day.

Training dives are about learning. Log what you have learned and in my books that counts as a noteworthy dive that should be logged.

Best

GJS

 

[TMHeimer]

To be honest, most of my dives are shallow shore dives in places I been to a whole lot. I logged one last week and mentioned getting 2 flounders and 3 scallops. In June I found a nice sized New England Neptune for the shell collection. Not sure how interesting such stuff will be to read if I'm still around 20 years from now. Or reading the student and instructor signatures I collected when I assisted OW courses. When we snowbird on the panhandle it's a bit more interesting, but rarely do I come across a species of shell I haven't seen before. Sometimes I look back to check out what the water temp. was a year ago today at the site I'm looking to dive. Again, not earth shattering, and not usually a whole lot of difference. I don't use the log to show weighting--a simple list of what to use where and for which wetsuit is all I need (and that's memorized anyway). I rarely buddy dive and when I do, I rarely see others with paper logs. Perhaps it's because of DCs nowadays or they just don't log anymore like some have mentioned here. My brother rarely dives (once a year with me basically), but he has dived worldwide in his Naval days and never logged anything. It's not something I would've thought of doing on my own. But, when I took OW, PADI said to log dives, so I do.

 

[wKkaY]

For training / try dives where I've learned something, I group all of the day's dives as one entry into the logbook (and give it a dive number too). I don't include depth/time here.

 

[JBFG]

Wow thanx for all the replies.
I ended up doing the following:
I logged 2 dives, which were the 2 full rescue scenario.¸

I did log the 65 min long DPV victory dive after though

 

[Mustard Dave]

It's your log book - you can log what you want. Depth and time requirements relate to training dives.

Have a think about why you log dives. Let's say you dive in your normal kit to a site you know like the back of your hand, and total dive time of say 45 minutes; you'd log it without a second thought, but what have you gained by doing so?

Now consider the rescue exercise. The instructor gives you a scenario; there's a missing diver, last seen in the following location... You kit up, do your buddy checks and jump in. You commence a search pattern and locate the missing diver. You then carry out a CBL, tow to the exit point and administer first aid. The total dive time may only take a few minutes, but a lot has happened on that dive. Writing it up helps you recall and record what you did on that dive, and also think what you might have done differently. I'll bet there's a lot more worthy of logging than your typical bimble around your local muddy puddle.

 

[stuartv]

I log every time I get in the water - pool or other. But, I don't count the pool dives in my "total # of dives."

I still want the pool dives in my log (even though I don't count them in my dive total), so that I can keep track in my log of when I was in the pool, with whom, and what I was doing.

For training dives that involve numerous short surface intervals - and thus download from my computer as multiple short dives - I just merge them together. I.e. I download my computer into Subsurface, then I select all the short dives that were really one time in the water, right-click, and do Merge. After that, it just shows as one dive in my log. If it's a dive in the quarry, I'll number it so that it counts in my dive total. If it was a pool dive, it gets numbered as "0".

Your log is supposed to be a record of the diving you've done. Anyone who says it is "wrong" to write down in your book that you got in a pool and practiced some skill - even if it's only for 10 minutes - well, they have a pretty different view of what a dive log is for than I do.

If someone says "well, it's fine to write it in your book, but it's wrong to count it in your total # of dives," well, I have to wonder what they are doing with their book and their "dive total". I mean, there are courses that have a minimum dive count prerequisite. But, for those, what dives count is up to the instructor who should be reviewing your log book. If the instructor decides to not accept you into a course because it requires (say, for example) 50 dives and your log book has 50, but 5 of them were in a pool, that is up to the instructor. You haven't done anything wrong by writing all 50 down in your book. Nor have you done anything "wrong" if the instructor asks how many dives you've done and you say 50. It's up to them to review your experience, not JUST ask for a number. If they want to know how many non-pool dives, or how many non-training dives you have done, they need to ask specifically that.