Know before you go!!!!

[Bubblebreath]

20 yrs ago, in Panama City, that was common (I dove there quite a lot 20-25 yrs ago). Sounds like your main problem was buoyancy control and not watching your gauges, all of which was exacerbated by depth.

We learned a lot on this dive [the hard way]Other than our slow assent and saftey stop we did everything WRONG. Also my wife's weight belt slid past her hips at our saftey stop, she was able to catch it with her toe. So here we are on the anchor line I'm breathing her air and I'm trying to get her weight belt back around her waist {NOT COOL} We now do a dive plan on all our dives. We do several lake dives a year to keep our skills up, a lot of these dives inthe summer have only 5 feet of vis. You learn how to stay together real fast. We only get 1 week a year to play in the ocean,but if we have 40 feet of vis. we think that's GREAT!!!!

 

[Bubblebreath]

If you have not did the searches I reccomended please do, they really don't have much to do with the tables. They will give you a strategy to plan your dive make sure you comunicate with your partner then execute your dive and NOT Run low or out of air.

Edit
Sorry on my first read I missed that this incident happened 20 years ago. I guess you learned well from the experience.

We still talk about it at the start of every year. I haven't got back on a boat or back to shore with less than 500 lb's of air since. Bad experence, GREAT LESSON. We plan our dive and dive our plan and use computers We also check each others 2-3times a dive to make sure they read about the same,just for safety.I will do the searches and read them think I know what they are, but always need to refresh the old brain Thanks for your concern!!!!!!