Tiki Swim Pier to Harbor Swim Dry Run Saturday (No Pun Intended)

Today is Sunday as I write this. I had zero energy yesterday because I decided that I'd try the long 2.4 mile Tiki Swim course yesterday.  Here's my recap:
I entered the brown water at tower 3 on the south side of the pier. The waves were nothing-maybe up to 2 feet.  The ocean was sloppy and choppy all the way.  What is with this brown water?  Maybe a bloom of algae or something.  You can't see more than two feet in front of you.  I actually rested my eyes a lot with them closed on and off because I couldn't see anything anyway. 
I hit the end of the pier (about 50 yards off the end) at 23 minutes.  I stopped for a current check and there WAS a mild current moving north to south.  Unfortunately, I swam against a mild current until I reached the pink cottages.  Now, to clarify, I was in the water as far out as the end of the pier on this leg of the swim.  The chop was 1 foot this leg from the pier to the cottages.  I was feeling good up to this point. 
I know this harbor area well because I have swum all over this area many times.  The currents are different and usually rough.  The water runs south all the times that I have swum the harbor water. Yesterday the water got rough-a good two-foot chop- north of the pink cottages and the current got stronger running south.  The swim got hard and it took me a while to reach the first rock jetty.  I hit that at 1 hour and six minutes.  I have swum from rock jetty to the north rock jetty many times and yesterday was a stronger-than-usual current that I had to swim into.  Interestingly, as I swam and swam, and didn't go anywhere, I kept thinking that the organizers of this Tiki Swim must not have swum the course, because the better way would be to swim from the Harbor to the Pier!
I swam hard-the kind of swimming when you are almost punching into the waves and pulling HARD to try to move forward.  The object that the swimmer can site on is the red light at the end of the harbor rock jetty.  I would swim for a while, look to the red light, and see that I wasn't any or much closer to it.  It was really miserable.  From 1:06 at the first jetty to the second jetty at 1:50 was HARD.  I was shot, and considered floating into the beach instead of turning into the channel. 
I forgot to say that I wanted to see if I could do the swim within the 2:20 cut-off time.  Then as I entered the channel I started thinking about tides.  Would I be swimming with the tide or against it.  It turned out to be a pretty neutral tide, possibly moving into the harbor a tiny bit.  I had no energy. I was dead.  I plugged on, looking at my watch every 5 minutes, and wondered if I could make the time.  Where the heck was that boat ramp, anyway?  I know where it is, but swimming dead-tired toward it was rough.  My slow-motion final leg FINALLY ended when I FINALLY saw the boat ramp.  I didn't realize there was so much stuff in that harbor. Gas stations, boat tie-ups, RV parks with people in chairs watching you, fishermen watching you, etcetera.  The ramp is slimy with green moss and slippery.  I knelt down, caught my breath, and jogged up the ramp. Time 2 hours and ten minutes for the 2.4 mile course. Ten minutes to spare.  That current and chop from where the surfers surf at the mouth of the San Luis Rey outlet to the north rock jetty took a lot of time!
No pictures because the water looked just like the day before.  The brown water did clear up getting closer to the north rock jetty and in the channel, so that was nice.  Any swimmer comments would be appreciated.