Check that kit out!

[Finless]

Due to many reasons (including weather, money and ill parents) I haven't had a dive since last September so I arranged a beginning of season shallow wreck (22 mtrs) dive for my club on 29th May.

We had a number of charter boat (a RIB in this case) novices + a number in the same situation as me so a shallow warm up dive was needed and I refused a few requests to go a bit deeper.

As is my wont I went in last and headed down the shot line on my own (aiming to find someone on the wreck when I got down there).

My first job was to deploy the anchor lift bag and send it up. I'd got the bag at the point where the anchor was starting to lift when I decided to swim out and back again to make sure I wasn't going to get caught on the chain or rope when I noticed I was ascending.

I dumped air and I flipped over and tried to fin back down but couldn't. At about the time where I felt my fins becoming loose because of the air in my dry suit feet I was becoming mightily concerned. I flipped over so I was heads up and tried to dump air as fast as I could but to no avail.

I managed a 4 minute dive to 21 mtrs and one swift ascent. Fortunately due to the very short time under water I suffered no noticable adverse affects. I think the problem was due to a stiff dry suit inflator that wasn't seating properly and was slowly allowing air into my dry suit + some "lay off rustiness".

Anyway, the point of my post is to remind you to check your gear out after a lengthy lay off from diving .......... ideally in a pool or somewhere shallow!

I think someone may have mentioned this fact to me in my formative diving years .......... about 10 billion times!!!