Camel sendBody performance issue - performance

Question

I have a camel, activeMQ, spring based app and running into a peculiar problem w.r.t performance.
When i call producerTemplate.sendBody() it takes anywhere between 40ms and 900ms for the call to return. There is no pattern - its all over the place. The message itself is tiny - less that 100 bytes. Note; Other than these tests, nothing else is going on in the system - no memory issue, no cpu issue etc.
I have tried the following steps:
1) Replaced oracle as my store and used KahaDB - no difference
2) In the activeMQ config i set useAsyncSend to true, alwaysSessionAsync to false - no difference
3) Just for fun i set persistent=false in the - no difference
Till now i was suspecting that the persistence was somehow the culprit - it appears that it is not so
With all the above changes still in place i invoked producerTemplate.sendBody() twice - this is where it gets really interesting - the first invocation takes the same amt of time (between 40 and 800ms) - the second invocation takes less than 1ms. Now that is the kind of performance that i was expecting :-)
I am a little lost - i am suspecting that the for some reason the call to producerTemplate.sendBody() does not return till the consumer thread STARTS, which is why the second call to sendBody returns extremely quickly. It almost makes no sense but i have run out of theories.
Any help and pointers will be really helpful - right now my throughput is looking terrible.
My config file looks like: (i am sending to a queue jmsP1EndPoint)
<broker:broker id="hexgenBroker" brokerName="hexgenBroker"
persistent="false" useJmx="false" start="true">
<broker:transportConnectors>
<broker:transportConnector uri="vm://hexgenBroker" />
</broker:transportConnectors>
<broker:managementContext>
<broker:managementContext createConnector="false" />
</broker:managementContext>
<broker:persistenceAdapter>
<broker:kahaDB directory="activemq-data" journalMaxFileLength="32mb" />
</broker:persistenceAdapter>
<broker:systemUsage>
<broker:systemUsage>
<broker:memoryUsage>
<broker:memoryUsage limit="20 mb"/>
</broker:memoryUsage>
<broker:storeUsage>
<broker:storeUsage limit="1 gb"/>
</broker:storeUsage>
<broker:tempUsage>
<broker:tempUsage limit="200 mb"/>
</broker:tempUsage>
</broker:systemUsage>
</broker:systemUsage>
</broker:broker>
<bean class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close" id="jmsDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="${driverClassName}"/>
<property name="url" value="${url}"/>
<property name="username" value="${dbusername}"/>
<property name="password" value="${password}"/>
<property name="testOnBorrow" value="true"/>
<property name="testOnReturn" value="true"/>
<property name="testWhileIdle" value="true"/>
<property name="timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis" value="1800000"/>
<property name="numTestsPerEvictionRun" value="3"/>
<property name="minEvictableIdleTimeMillis" value="1800000"/>
<property name="validationQuery" value="SELECT 1 FROM DUAL"/>
</bean>
<camel:camelContext id="hexContext" depends-on="hexgenBroker jms">
<camel:endpoint id="p0EndPoint" pattern="InOut" uri="direct:p0" />
<camel:endpoint id="jmsP1EndPoint" pattern="InOnly" uri="jms:queue:p1" />
<camel:endpoint id="dlq" pattern="InOnly" uri="jms:queue:ActiveMQ.DLQ" />
<camel:endpoint id="directP1EndPoint" pattern="InOnly" uri="direct:p1"/>
<camel:route>
<camel:from ref="p0EndPoint" />
<camel:onException>
<camel:exception>java.lang.Throwable</camel:exception>
<camel:redeliveryPolicy logRetryStackTrace="false" logStackTrace="false"/>
</camel:onException>
<camel:to uri="class:com.hexgen.core.job.P0ContextHolder"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobFactory"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobPayloadTranslator"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobPayloadEnricher"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobPropertyValidator"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobManager"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobBusinessValidator"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobInflightDataManager"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobComplianceManager"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobPayloadPersister"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:jobEventTranslator"/>
</camel:route>
<camel:route>
<camel:from ref="jmsP1EndPoint"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:p1EntryPoint"/>
<camel:transacted />
<camel:to uri="class:com.hexgen.core.job.P1ContextHolder"/>
<camel:to ref="directP1EndPoint" />
</camel:route>
<camel:route>
<camel:from ref="dlq"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:dlqEntryPoint"/>
</camel:route>
<camel:route>
<camel:from ref="directP1EndPoint" />
<camel:onException>
<camel:exception>java.lang.Throwable</camel:exception>
<camel:redeliveryPolicy logRetryStackTrace="false" logStackTrace="false"/>
<camel:to uri="bean:p1Exception"/>
</camel:onException>
<camel:choice>
<camel:when>
<camel:jxpath>in/body/translationNeededAndIsNotReRouted</camel:jxpath>
<camel:bean ref="eventToEventTranslator"/>
<camel:to ref="directP1EndPoint"/>
</camel:when>
<camel:otherwise>
<camel:dynamicRouter>
<camel:method ref="hexgenComponentRouter" method="route" />
</camel:dynamicRouter>
</camel:otherwise>
</camel:choice>
</camel:route>
</camel:camelContext>
<bean id="jmsConnectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQXAConnectionFactory">
<property name="brokerURL" value="vm://hexgenBroker" />
<property name="redeliveryPolicy" ref="redeliveryPolicy" />
<property name="prefetchPolicy" ref="prefetchPolicy" />
<property name="alwaysSessionAsync" value="false" />
<property name="useAsyncSend" value="true" />
</bean>
<bean id="prefetchPolicy" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQPrefetchPolicy">
<property name="all" value="0" />
</bean>
<bean id="redeliveryPolicy" class="org.apache.activemq.RedeliveryPolicy">
<property name="maximumRedeliveries" value="0"/>
</bean>
<bean id="pooledConnectionFactory" class="com.atomikos.jms.AtomikosConnectionFactoryBean" init-method="init" destroy-method="close">
<property name="uniqueResourceName" value="hexjms" />
<property name="xaConnectionFactory" ref="jmsConnectionFactory" />
<property name="minPoolSize" value="10"/>
<property name="maxPoolSize" value="30"/>
<property name="borrowConnectionTimeout" value="600"/>
</bean>
<bean id="jmsConfig"
class="org.apache.activemq.camel.component.ActiveMQConfiguration">
<property name="connectionFactory" ref="pooledConnectionFactory" />
<property name="maxConcurrentConsumers" value="30"/>
<property name="concurrentConsumers" value="15" />
<property name="transacted" value="true" />
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager" />
<property name="cacheLevelName" value="CACHE_NONE"/>
<property name="errorHandlerLogStackTrace" value="false"/>
<property name="asyncStartListener" value="true"/>
<property name="asyncConsumer" value="true"/>
<property name="deliveryPersistent" value="false"/>
</bean>
<bean id="jms" class="org.apache.activemq.camel.component.ActiveMQComponent">
<property name="configuration" ref="jmsConfig" />
</bean>
<bean class="com.hexgen.p1.core.exceptions.P1ExceptionHandler" id="p1Exception">
</bean>