The Problem with Online Dive Logs

Reader David Wilson (Mundelein, IL) logged his dives online at MyDiveBook.com, but the last time he went to do so earlier this year, he got a shock -- the website was no longer there. “I haven’t been able to get any response to my e-mails,” he wrote us. “How do I get my hundreds of dives back?”

When we went to MyDiveBook’s website, it had a message from its host server, iPower, saying the site had been suspended. When we clicked on iPower’s “contact us directly” link, it sent us to a page with a “Past Due” in the URL address. Oops, did MyDiveLog forget to pay its bills? An iPower sales rep told us the account may have been suspended because of billing issues. It’s not because its owner forgot about the website, because a technical rep confirmed he had recently renewed MyDiveBook’s domain name. After digging a little deeper, we found out MyDiveBook’s administrator is a Chris Steele in Shelby, BC, but he has not returned our calls or e-mails.

So unfortunately, David, those dives you logged may be lost permanently. If you want to find an online substitute, sites that look frequently used by divers are DiveExchange (www.diveexchange.com) and DiveRecord (www.diverecord.com). However, you run the risk of those sites going black, too. DiveLogOnline was a popular site once but now it also is defunct.

If you don’t want to carry a paper log book around, the better bet is to download dive log software onto your computer. Notable ones we found (Windows only, no Mac version) are SharkPoint ($25; www.dreamdives.org) and Scubase Dive Log ($49; www.scubase.net). Readers probably will write in with their suggestions. That way, you’re guaranteed to see your dive log every time you turn on the computer.