These photos are from July 10, 2011. I arrived and anchored my boat about an hour and a half before slack. I couldn't see the patch of kelp that marks the reef that I usually swim out to. The current was holding it under the surface. An hour before slack I could see the kelp start to pop up and I decided to swim for it 45 minutes before the slack. Once I swam out from shore, the flooding current was too strong to swim against, but I didn't want to give up and swim back so I held on to a nearby stem of bull kelp to wait for the current to slow down. Bull kelp is slippery and not the easiest thing to hold on to when the current is trying to drag you away. I switched hands every few minutes when my arm got tired. A few seals drifted by watching me. Eventually, the flow seemed to be less so I swam out to the far patch of kelp and swam down the outside of the reef. Visibility was 15-20' (disappointingly less than the last times I was here). I was expecting to end up on the wall, but the slope was more rounded and "stepping" in this area. I went down to about 110 feet deep. I saw more crimson anemones than the other times. It was also much darker than on my previous dives here. The darkness, the current and the distance from shore made this dive feel more nerve-wracking than the bright and colourful place I remembered. The current had finally stopped (over 1/2 an hour late) and I followed my compass back up the long, 10-20' deep, kelp-covered reef back to shore. My dive computer said that my dive was 50 minutes long, but my watch on the boat said that I'd been in the water for almost 2 hours. Current and surface-swims don't go together well.
