Gozo

San Dimitri Point

The westernmost corner of Gozo, where a shallow reef platform gives way to house-sized boulders and then to open blue. Come for the big schooling fish and a wall that keeps going long after you have to stop.

Advanced🧱 Wall25 to 60 mBoat divePopularity: lowAlso called Il-Ponta ta' San Dimitri, San Dimitri, Tirxa

Plan this dive

Sea conditions

Excellent right now

Flat, sheltered and calm

Forecast for the site, updated 01:33 AM

Waves: 0.3 m; from SE
Wind: 8 km/h; SSW, gusts 14
Swell: 0.2 m; 5 s period
Sea temp: 28 °C; air 27 °C

Next 7 days

Today🌦️67 0.6 m
13 SW

Sat☁️86 0.4 m
14 SSW

Sun🌦️89 0.4 m
8 ENE

Mon☁️98 0.2 m
15 NW

Tue☁️63 0.4 m
26 NW

Wed🌤️62 0.7 m
22 E

Thu🌤️72 0.6 m
10 NNE

Sunrise 06:47, sunset 19:06

Exposed to wind and swell from: SW (225°), W (270°), NW (315°), N (0°). This is the most weather-sensitive corner of Gozo. Anything with west in it, and most northerlies, make the point undiveable, and skippers generally want an easterly or a genuinely flat calm before they commit to the ride. Visibility is the reward when it does go: clean open-ocean water, often thirty metres plus. Always carry a big SMB and a whistle, and agree a drift plan with the skipper before you splash. Best season: June to October, when settled easterlies are most likely and water temperature at depth is at its friendliest. August and September bring the best odds of barracuda and amberjack in numbers..

The dive

San Dimitri is the point where Gozo runs out of land. The cliffs above touch eighty metres and the sea below has nothing between it and Sicily, which is exactly why the fish life here is on a different scale to the sheltered bays. Local fishermen call the reef Tirxa, and they know why they come.

The boat ties up over a shallow platform at around six metres. You follow the reef out and the seabed starts stacking itself into boulders the size of small houses, groupers tucked underneath them and dentex hanging in the gaps. Around thirty metres the slope stops pretending and simply falls away past sixty into water no one on a recreational plan is going to see the bottom of. The trick is to keep glancing outward rather than down, because that is where the barracuda hang in silver columns and where amberjack and tuna come through on a fast strafing run that is over before you have got the camera up.

On the way back, a gully runs between the reef platform and the shore, sheltered and green and stuffed with smaller life. It is the best kind of safety stop: shallow, busy and completely unhurried.

Get the weather right and this is one of the finest boat dives on the island. Get it wrong and you will not even be able to tie up.

Standing on the western edge of Gozo with nothing but open sea in front of you
Barracuda columns and amberjack raids out in the blue
Boulders the size of houses with grouper living under them
A green, sheltered gully that turns the safety stop into a dive of its own
Visibility that regularly runs past thirty metres

Typical plan

Drop on the platform at six metres, swim out across the boulder field and drop to around thirty five to forty metres at the edge of the wall, then work slowly back up along the rock keeping an eye seaward. Twenty five to thirty minutes on the deep section, then the long shallow return through the gully to burn off gas and nitrogen. Single 15 litre or twins on nitrox 28 to 30 depending on your planned max, total run time around fifty minutes, SMB up before you leave the reef because the current can carry you off the point.

What the bottom looks like

1Shallow mooring platform, ideal for the stop6 m deep · 0 m out
2Sheltered gully between platform and shore10 m deep · 30 m out
3House-sized boulders with grouper underneath25 m deep · 95 m out
4Edge where the slope falls into the blue30 m deep · 115 m out
5Vertical wall running past 60 m55 m deep · 150 m out
6Sand and rubble at the deepest turn point62 m deep · 170 m out

Cartoon cross-section along the usual route from the boat drop. Depths are approximate.

Broken Coralline limestone reef and enormous fallen boulders, with patches of sand and rubble collecting in the gaps and at the base of the wall.

Who you might meet

Getting in and staying safe

Boat only, and usually a long ride: expect roughly forty five minutes to an hour from Mgarr, or a shorter run from Xlendi or Dwejra if your centre launches on the west side. Skippers anchor or live-boat over the shallow reef platform at about six metres. There is no shore option worth discussing, since the cliffs above the site are sheer and enormous. Because it is a committing site with a long ride home, most centres bundle it into a two dive west coast trip with Ta' Camma, Wardija or Dwejra and carry oxygen and a decent first aid kit as a matter of course.

Current runs here, sometimes hard, and it can pick up mid dive
Surface chop builds fast on this corner even when the forecast looks fine
Easy to overshoot depth on a wall that drops past 60 m
Long distance from any harbour, so a recall or a problem takes time to resolve
No shore exit anywhere nearby, so losing the boat is a genuinely serious event
Exposure and dehydration on a long open boat ride in summer

A bit of history

The point takes its name from a chapel dedicated to Saint Dimitri and the story that goes with it. Local tradition says a hermit built the little chapel out on the cliff edge, that the cliff eventually gave way and carried it into the sea, and that the chapel stands there still with a lamp lit in its window and a bell that tolls on the hour. Divers have been looking for it for decades and no one has found a stone of it, which is very much the point of a good legend. The chapel of San Dimitri that actually exists sits inland near Gharb and carries its own tale of a mother whose prayer brought her son back from Barbary pirates.

Divers say

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Further reading: Visit Gozo, San Dimitri Point · Calypso Sub Aqua Club, San Dimitri Point · Atlantis Gozo, San Dimitri Point (Tirxa)