While you're waiting, it might be helpful to contact your water dept and get an analysis of your water--specifically, whether it contains metals and, if so, which ones. Adding high doses of chlorine to metall-laden water will make it pretty ugly-looking, but much of it can be filtered out.

Then again, the conversion process to chlorine can produce some pretty interesting colors in and of itself--if you don't have metals in the water, and the coffee-colored water is a byproduct of the conversion, there's not much you can do about it other than keep adding chlorine...

Are you sure that you want to convert now, instead of waiting until spring? If you convert now, then close the pool, you're going to have to clean up the winter mess when spring arrives, anyway. Why not just let the pool water dilute itself with the winter rains, then do it all at once when spring gets here--that way, when it's done, you can go swimming! The conversion will go easier, the lower levels of Softswim that you have. Just something to consider.....