[pieater]

I've actually posted this in the summer of 2006 as part of my trip report on Cozumel, but as this topic has been created, and confession is good for the soul, here we go again...

The context:
My partner does not dive. We have two small children, who are demanding in the way that only parents of small children can appreciate. They are also different sexes and there is a 4 year gap between the two. As a result they don't like the same things and find it difficult to play together for any period of time. Added together this means that my wife is not exactly overjoyed when I suggest that I bugger off diving for two days on our family "ooh would you believe it dear, I've booked us into a place with great diving - fancy that" holiday.

However, I do what needs to be done and get enough brownie points to do a dive package on Cozumel.

Back in the mists of time, I was about 6 and my parents had a psychodelic green carpet and pea green walls in the hallway (which will date the experience perfectly for anyone of similar vintage) when I watched Jacques etc. diving all over the world. I drooled at those images in a way that I now reserve for Kylie. Between those days and the age of 36 I wanted to dive coral seas and look at the pretty fishes.

Add together my long held desire to dive Cozumel and the domestic graft I'd put in to make it happen and you get one rabidly determined individual who would stab bambi through the heart to do these dives.

The dive
OK, first dive of the day and it's taken 3 hours, a bus, a ferry and a dive boat to get there. I've dragged a Salvo, two wings, a backplate, DSMB's, spools, two reg sets, fins and mask from the UK and I've already had a "discussion" with some emaciated mexican dive monkey who tells me that I'll need 10 kilos to make my lardy english arse sink. In the end I take the weight and put half of it back in the weight box when he wasn't looking. When we got in I was still massively overweighted.

The dive brief seemed to be a 20 second chat with the guide and then he points to who you're supposed to buddy with. I get some chap from Belgium who I've exchanged all of 3.5 words with in my life. I try to find out what his quals are, but he's busy getting kitted up. Of course he is. There will be chance to go through that at the buddy check, oh, he's just rolled over the side. As has everyone else. Better get in then.

I hit the water and the guide calls us together. Once we're roughly assembled on the surface, down we go. I cannot overstate how excited I was to finally be doing this. It's everything I'd hoped it would be. Out comes the camera and off I go, snapping away - slowly getting separated from the group, then catching them up again. We get to a maximum of about 25M and in my head there is no end to how great this is. After a while a glance at my SPG. It's at 30 bar and I have no idea how that's happened. In the UK I'd expect to still be at 200 bar on my 12l twins. Of course this revelation comes when I can't even see any others in the group, so up I go looking for bubble streams. I'd got to about 15M when I spy bubbles coming from behing a coral stack about 40 - 50M away. I'm half-way through a breath when it all goes tight and that's my lot. I know that I should try to make it to someone's AAS, but I don't fancy that at all. The surface is nearer and I'm not in deco so I CESA it in finest PADI style. I totally forget to breathe out on the way up and only realise when I reach the surface and seem to exhale for an extraordinary length of time.

The dive boat spot me and steam over. I do all the other dives. Not big, not clever, but there you are. After that incident I had a great time on the rest of the dives.

Lessons for me:
1, Don't forget the basics. The conditions are perfect but that doesn't mean you've evolved gills. Check the sodding gauges.
2, Think about the changes with the new equipment. Stop salivating about the dive and think about the gas differences between a 12l twinset at 230 bar and an ALI80 nudging 200 bar if it's lucky.
3, Don't trust your buddy without reason. It would transpire that he'd seen my first stage A clamp adaptor leaking throughout the dive. Thanks for sharing, knobber.

Hope this helps someone else.

Martin