[grahamsm1]

2 years ago I did a PADI OW in Turkey. It went very well, my instructor was excellent making sure that I studied hard as well as making the course fun. The following week I so enthused that I decided to go ahead with the AOW course. Again everthing was good untill the last day. I was given a new instructor who I had not met before. On the last dive which I got to plan we had been down at 30m for 5 minutes when I noticed I using air at a fast rate (I,m better at air coservation now) and signaled to the instructor. We moved up to 20m 90bar for me, moving on I was at 50 bar at 12m and again had my instructor look at my gauge, he indicated we should continue and seemed unconcerned. A little while later at 10m I took my last breath from my tank and realised I was out of air. It was impossible for me to signal the instructor as he was fining away from me at the time. Fortunately the previous weeks training kicked in and I made a controlde asscent breathing out as I went. I was pretty scared but made it to the surface ok. Managed to get the BCD inflated and kept my weights and waited at the surface for the instructor who appeared a few minutes later and seemed surprised that I had run out of air. We then had to surface swim a little over a mile to get to our entry point. Nobody made a big deal out of it including me although I was pretty shooken up. I didn't dive again with that company in fact I didn't dive again for another year. i went back to turkey the following year and ha 18 dives with a different company who were great. As I dont dive that often I now make sure that re-read the PADI manual before a trip and have resolved not to blindly follow other people when I know there is a problem, what was I thinking to just ignore the fact that I was running out of air!!!!!