Islas Secas translates to the "dry islands." I assume this means there are no natural springs anywhere on these islands, but I don't know for sure because I have been spoiled by The Fox's reliable Little Wonder watermaker, tra-la.
We sailed 34 miles from Bahia Honda to the Secas for 3 days of fishing, snorkeling, and seashelling because we were way too cheap and lazy to pay for a permit to the nearby-but-much-more-popular Gulf of Chiriqui/Coiba National Marine Park. Instead we enjoyed Isla Cavada in hot and calm weather, which made for easy viewing of dozens of blue-chinned parrotfish while snorkeling along the anchorage's northern reef. On the last morning, however, we saw that clouds were beginning to cover the mainland so we decided to move on toward Golfito, Costa Rica, about 116 miles away, northwesterly-ish. Our only obstacle: Punta Burica, the long, skinny peninsula that straddles the Panama-Costa Rica border and which we'd have to round and then sail up the far side of, to reach Golfito.
We raised anchor at Isla Cavado about lunchtime. Sailing conditions were perfectly acceptable with 10-12-knot breezes until about 9PM. As we got closer to Punta Burica, we ran into a convection cell which radar told us was about 30 miles long by 20 miles wide. With a cell that size our radar became useless but not until juuuust after we'd spotted a freighter 20 miles away, heading in our direction. Winds increased and we started to get continuous flashes of high-altitude sheet lightning with occasional lightning bolts striking on both land and sea. We'd already become sensitized to lightning strikes in almost this very place, so we both stood watch through the rest of the night and every time the lightning flashed, like, every 12 seconds or so, I practiced all my best swear words. It was like dancing in Hell under Satan's Disco Ball.
One nice thing about the lightning, though: the flashes were so regular, it allowed me to keep a decent lookout for that freighter we'd spotted. We had a fair idea of where it was headed, so we changed course further inshore to give it some sea room, then changed course again to a rhumb line into Golfito. At sunrise the lightning finally let us go, as lightning in convection cells will do, so conditions became just right to anchor off of Tim and Katie's outfit in Golfito, Land and Sea Marina.
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