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).