First off, I suck a LOT of air. I swim, take pics etc so I just do.
My wife and I are in Cozumel back in November. It's her first trip and first experience at ocean diving and my first in over 10 years. We did a pre-dive at a local lake to work on buoyancy and re-familiarize ourselves with diving. Some friends of ours who have been diving quite a while recommend a dive master they use. We contacted him and went out on a medium sized boat with quite a few other folks but he was basically "our" divemaster. He goes over the dive plan, we settle on nothing over 80 feet, come up with 700 lbs of air etc. and we set out on our dive. He mentions they've seen black tips so we go with the group over to that area. We're cruising around and sea some eagle rays and behold, black tips. But, he keeps going deeper. We follow thinking A) he's the divemaster and B) he's here to look out for us. I see we are at 87 feet or so and figure we are doing ok. I then check a few minutes later...116 feet! Needless to say I'm a little irritated.
We continue the dive and my air gets to 1000. I tell him. Then, I'm at 700, I tell him. 500, I tell him. 200, I tell him and literally put the gauge in front of his face. We finally do our safety stop, I'm staying right beside him and by the end of it I'm breathing off his Octo. No biggie, I'm comfortable, life is good. Suddenly he drops a weight, looks at me, points to the surface then takes off to get the weight. I'm a little confused as his regulator is pretty much pulled from my mouth. I swim down, catch up with him, get one more breath as he points up again. I see my wife above me, know she has air so I frantically swim up to her as I am continually breathing out. I take one more breath off her regulator then shot to the surface.
TAKE AWAYS:
1. The divemaster is a guide. Don't rely on them 100%. If he hadn't been there I would have done my safety stop then ascended to the surface with around 4-500 lbs of air. However, I allowed the mindset that "he'll take care of me" to overrule my common sense. DON'T BE ME>>>Lesson Learned.
Your THOUGHTS:
1. Why did he take us so deep?
2. Why did he ignore my air issue when he was fully aware of the situation? Why didn't he simply ascend with both my wife and I then head back down for the weight? It was probably only 30 feet deep.
I confronted him after the dive and his response "We had a great dive, you saw lots of neat stuff. Do this next dive with me and I will take good care of you." Uhm, HELL NO, you kinda freaked me out (which doesn't happen often) and you thoroughly scared my wife who honestly hasn't seen me truly scared since we've been together.
Any thoughts are appreciated. I think I've learned my lesson from the dive but willing to hear others input on things I should have/could have done differently. I've been to Coz a few times and have always had excellent experiences until now. We dove with Dive Paradise the next day and had 2 great dives so the trip wasn't a total loss.
My wife and I are in Cozumel back in November. It's her first trip and first experience at ocean diving and my first in over 10 years. We did a pre-dive at a local lake to work on buoyancy and re-familiarize ourselves with diving. Some friends of ours who have been diving quite a while recommend a dive master they use. We contacted him and went out on a medium sized boat with quite a few other folks but he was basically "our" divemaster. He goes over the dive plan, we settle on nothing over 80 feet, come up with 700 lbs of air etc. and we set out on our dive. He mentions they've seen black tips so we go with the group over to that area. We're cruising around and sea some eagle rays and behold, black tips. But, he keeps going deeper. We follow thinking A) he's the divemaster and B) he's here to look out for us. I see we are at 87 feet or so and figure we are doing ok. I then check a few minutes later...116 feet! Needless to say I'm a little irritated.
We continue the dive and my air gets to 1000. I tell him. Then, I'm at 700, I tell him. 500, I tell him. 200, I tell him and literally put the gauge in front of his face. We finally do our safety stop, I'm staying right beside him and by the end of it I'm breathing off his Octo. No biggie, I'm comfortable, life is good. Suddenly he drops a weight, looks at me, points to the surface then takes off to get the weight. I'm a little confused as his regulator is pretty much pulled from my mouth. I swim down, catch up with him, get one more breath as he points up again. I see my wife above me, know she has air so I frantically swim up to her as I am continually breathing out. I take one more breath off her regulator then shot to the surface.
TAKE AWAYS:
1. The divemaster is a guide. Don't rely on them 100%. If he hadn't been there I would have done my safety stop then ascended to the surface with around 4-500 lbs of air. However, I allowed the mindset that "he'll take care of me" to overrule my common sense. DON'T BE ME>>>Lesson Learned.
Your THOUGHTS:
1. Why did he take us so deep?
2. Why did he ignore my air issue when he was fully aware of the situation? Why didn't he simply ascend with both my wife and I then head back down for the weight? It was probably only 30 feet deep.
I confronted him after the dive and his response "We had a great dive, you saw lots of neat stuff. Do this next dive with me and I will take good care of you." Uhm, HELL NO, you kinda freaked me out (which doesn't happen often) and you thoroughly scared my wife who honestly hasn't seen me truly scared since we've been together.
Any thoughts are appreciated. I think I've learned my lesson from the dive but willing to hear others input on things I should have/could have done differently. I've been to Coz a few times and have always had excellent experiences until now. We dove with Dive Paradise the next day and had 2 great dives so the trip wasn't a total loss.