This dive is almost a perfect example of how not to conduct a dive. Jacinta and I had not been on a dive in eight months. Some of our equipment was unfamiliar, and we had not completed a proper buoyancy check beforehand when we rushed to equip at the dive-shop.

We had agreed beforehand to descend down the anchor chain, but somehow I had forgotten all that once I was in the water, concentrating instead of my equipment rather than the environment. Descent was too fast, and we quickly lost sight of the anchor chain. Once we reached the bottom and checked depth it was discovered that we were much deeper than intended, and I had consumed a significant amount of air during the descent.

The bottom itself was problematic. The sea-bed was significantly sloped, yet I continued to believe it was flat, and tried to align myself to be perpendicular to it. The end result was a strong sense of vertigo, and a corresponding increase in stress. When underwater, stress is bad.

Before too long it was clear that we were consuming air too quickly, and that we should abort the dive. This was by far the scariest part of the entire experience — I started to ascend slowly, but Jacinta didn't follow. I was confused as to why Jacinta was staying on the bottom and seemed to be playing with the back of her buoyancy control device (BCD).

What I didn't understand was that Jacinta was poorly weighted. Her weights were uneven, causing her to roll whilst in the water; and also too heavy, causing her problems in ascent. We had been trained to dump all air from our BCDs during final ascent. Jacinta had done exactly this, but was carrying too much weight to be able to ascend without additional buoyancy.

Eventually Jacinta did inflate her BCD, and in our stressed situation we completed an ascent that was too fast, missing our safety-stop. We surfaced with 20-30 bar of air each, significantly lower than the 50 bar reserve recommended.

Luckily for us, despite doing all the wrong things, we suffered no ill effects after the dive. However the whole experience was an important reminder of how one should not get back into diving. Our mistakes included:

• Performing a reasonably deep boat dive after an extended break from diving. We should have started with a pier or shore dive.
• Using unfamiliar equipment, including wetsuits, BCDs and weights. Some of this was hire gear, but from a different shop than we had normally used.
• Not completing a buoyancy test before the dive. This resulted in improper weighting and difficulties during both swimming and ascent.

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