It was some years later when I was about 18, I went on a trip to Weymouth to meet my girlfriend’s stepfather and family. Her step father was a fire-fighter and a recreational diver in the local port area. Over the weekend that I was staying there I brought up in conversation that I too was interested in diving but had never got the chance to try it. The next day when I got up, he had already got out his diving equipment, tank and harness, mask, open heel fins and giant weight belt as he was going to be using a dry suit. He then told me that today we were going diving. I was so excited about this that it didn’t even occur to me to think about what type of suit I would be wearing, or what time of year it was. It was December by the way and anyone from the u.k will know all about how cold December can be.

So there we were on the boat on our way to the dive site with only one more stop to make, to pick up the tanks that we would need for the dive. We stopped at the local dive shop which must have belonged to a friend of Chris’s, and in return for the tanks they wanted a couple of lobsters! (I am Not sure if that’s legal or not!)

In total there was four of us, myself, Rhiannon (my girlfriend at the time), her mother Anna and Chris her step father. All three of us were planning to try diving for the first time under the instruction of Chris, who I now know is not by any means a scuba instructor. We arrived at the dive site just off the tip of Portland, were Chris started to put on his equipment and informed us that Anna would be going first with him, then me, then Rhiannon, all three of us using the same tank.

When it got to be my turn he handed me a 3mm short wet suit that was to big, a tank and harness (no b.c.d) and a 20lb or 10 kg weight belt and of course the fins and mask. His pre dive briefing involved telling me that “if I see you holding your breath I will punch you in the stomach to make you breath, so don’t hold your breath.”

Once I was in the water I had no problem in getting down due to the excessive amount of weight around my waste and luckily I had no equalising trouble either, as I can equalise just by moving the inner part of my ear. I bounced along the bottom in about 25 ft or 7m of water, occasionally seeing  through the terrible visibility small crabs and the odd unknown fish. After about 15-20 mins I was so cold I was blue from the lips down so we ended the dive and went to the surface. Once we were all back on the boat and warm again we were all talking about what a good experience it was regardless of the cold, poor fitting equipment, over weighting, poor instruction and terrible Vis. This horrifying account of a first dive didn’t put me off, but maybe this will outline a few factors that you may want to consider when going for a first diving experience.