Weather Is In Control

I went in to see the Port Captain in Portobello on Tuesday morning, with hopes to get underway immediately thereafter. While in town, it began to rain, so I had to wait for a break before returning to Ariel. We put the dinghy away as soon as I got back, but then it began to rain again. Our planned destination was only about two hours away, so we decided we would just leave when it stopped. At 3 pm, we decided we would have to wait another day, not wanting to risk a late day or night arrival. The next morning looked good, so we were on our way. We had no sooner cleared the harbor, and the rain started in again and quickly became very heavy. We turned on the radar and navigated with it as visibility was very limited. The heavy rain continued unabated. We were approaching the point where we would turn in to go behind Isla Linton, our planned stop, and the rain was still not letting up. We decided we would go to that point and just hold there. Amazingly, at the exact moment we reached our turning point, the rain stopped completely. We went in and found a place to drop the hook. We didn't know what to expect, but certainly we were not expecting over 60 boats, but now that we have been here a while, we see it makes sense. A road runs nearby, where it is easy to get a taxi or a bus to Colon for supplies. We have seen several boats making major provisioning trips. It looks like an affordable place to hang out during the wet season. We had planned to leave the very next day, but the rains resumed and continued throughout the following day, dropping several inches. There are two seasons in Panama: dry and wet. The wet season runs from June through November, and since this is November, we were forewarned. The rain finally let up the following day, with just intermittent showers, and as much as we wanted to leave, we were now facing strong trade winds coming from the east, exactly the direction we needed to go. The weather is now beautiful, so we will just hang out and wait for a change in wind direction, now forecast for early next week. There is a large fish farm operated here and a small village. We went in to check it out and found a small tienda, so we picked up a couple of grocery items. Just 40 more miles and we will be in the San Blas.