Well I thought that was the case 
And it is for a lot of messages that I looked at, but clearly not all.
One thing to note is that in the 9 seconds of what looks like calm in the debug, as @robmac notes, the controller is flooding the network with messages trying to get the message through with different speeds, hops, etc. Another series of forum posts to read as background is here.
OH (zwave binding) doesnât know or care about hops. It just sends the message to the controller and waits (a certain time 
) for a response or to cancel.
Bob