I've been trying to dive here again, but the marine forecast has been showing 20-30 knot winds from the West almost every day. The entry is tricky enough without having to worry about being thrown around by waves. Finally (Jun. 5, 2010), the forecast showed light winds for most of the day so I drove out to Possession Point. By the way, the resort developers seem to have changed their minds since I saw online that the property is up for sale again. Although it was an almost windless day, there was a 3 to 6-foot swell rolling over the rocks right at my entry-point. I watched it for awhile and saw that there was the occasional, 2-minute gap of calm water before the next set of waves came in. I made 2 trips down the trail with my gear, waited for the calm pause, flopped in and swam away from the rocks just as the white water exploded behind me. Once I was away from the bubble-filled zone, visibility was 20-25 feet. I swam down along the wall, past the rubble field and sloping reefs at the point. I swam farther than last time and another wall started up. It went down to about 50 feet deep. This one wasn't covered with plumose anemones like the one by the entry-point, but there were still lots of fish-eating anemones. The wall had some deep, canyon-like cracks running up it. There was a small old anchor at the bottom of one of them. I wanted to keep swimming farther (I saw some reefs stretching out in the sand at the base of the wall), but my air was half gone and even 30-50 feet deep, I was struggling against the surge. I swam up to the 20-foot deep ledge at the top of the wall for the swim back. Because of the covering of stalked kelp moving in the surge and the bubbles scattering the light, it was difficult to see much up here. I saw a school of black rockfish in the distance. The strawberry anemone canyon is still there. When I made it back to my starting point, I had to bob around on the surface and wait for a gap in the waves to try and get out of the water. After a few tries, some "oh @*#!" moments, a torn dry glove and some extra holes in the knees of my drysuit, I hauled myself out of the water and had the hike back up the trail to look forward to. This is still my favorite Victoria-area shore dive, but I'm going to have to try and come here at high tide on an actually-calm day.
