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Originally Posted by coley
does anyone know how high the swells were officially and what the wind speed was? Really amazing to see the power of the lake....
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I spent the morning on saturday laying and repostioning the course markers for the swim portion of the Timberman Sprint at Ellacoya State Beach. At sunrise it was fairly calm. (5.50 am)
As soon as the sun came up it started blowing from the WNW at 10-15 MPH. By the time the last swimmers were out of the water it was.. (According to the Weather Channel) WNW at 21 MPH. It's not "offical", but I would estimate the waves to be 15-20 inches at 9.00am when the last wave of swimmers came out of the water.
We planned on pulling the markers in mid afternoon, but conditions had gotten to the point that it was unsafe to even attempt it. The Sprint course is 1/3 mile.. so the markers were close to shore and not a navigation problem.
Sunday was almost dead calm for laying the 1.2 mile course for the 1/2 ironman at 5.30 am the wind was W 5-6 MPH. By the time we pulled the 10 markers at around 10 am. it had shifted back to WNW and the Broads was really chopped up with swells 1- 1&1/2 feet.
If you read the stories in todays Citizen online.. you can understand the problems the swimmers had with the lake on saturday.
http://www.citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll...gory=citizen02
It really is an amazing event to watch.. the winning time was just over 4 hours for a 1.2 mile swim, followed by a 56 mile bike ride and just for good measure capped off by a 13.1 mile run.
