Month: July 2009

One of the things we’ve been thinking about for the Triathlon in two weeks (egads!) is what the current will look like. I’ll be jumping in the water around 6:05am. One of my colleagues helped translate this graph:

The numbers at bottom are the times of day (Y axis) , the numbers on the side (X Axis) are speed of in flow and out flow. Out flow is green. So at about  7:00 or so the max  “outflow” will be at around 2 ½ knots, around 3 MPH. 3 mph is 1 mile every 20 minutes. So if you are rubber duck, it will take you ~20 min….

One of the reasons it occurs on variable dates is that it has to be an outflow, otherwise it would be impossible to swim.  Timing is critical too, a couple years ago for example, the Men 40-45 took on average over 30 minutes while the woman’s 40-45 took about 20 minutes.   Reason was simply the tide was closer to slack (10:28– 11:15 this year).