We wake up to a different world. It's dry, it's windy, and there's nothing and nobody here but us.

It takes us ages to get the camp packed up and breakfast-and-coffee done. It doesn't seem like there's a rush, the thermals haven't been working before 10am on any day so far. What we don't realise is that one of the Swiss team is already in the air, and by the time we launch he's got 2 hours of xc already and is passing Vosburg close by.

The wind is soon very strong. I tow first but I break the winch line by flying at too much of an angle to the tow vehicle in an attempt to make up for a bad start position. We lose half an hour while the winch line is repaired. By then the dust-devils are raging across the pan, and the wind seems to be about 40km/h.

I wait for a lull in the wind, and launch. The tow is nice, smooth, and I cross the pan into wind while on tow, which shows me that the wind is surprisingly weaker than expected, or I've chosen a good lull. The thermals are difficult to work for the first 500m of altitude, but then I link up with the lift above a strong dust-devil, and I rocket up to cloudbase at 6m/s.

I'm slightly nervous. The cumulus is building fast, all around me, and the wind is strong. It's a wild day. I don't know how long I can ride this beast.

And then a little butterfly comes flitting by at 1000m above the ground. Ahh. It's a sign! It's going to be a nice day, little soft white fluttering butterfly. It's a symbol of the day. Thwack! It flies straight into my helmet at high speed. It is dead.

I look down over my toes at my shadow getting blown across the Karoo. I feel very small and vulnerable.

Nevil launches, and it makes me feel a lot better to have company in the air. He goes backwards while on the tow line, the wind has increased. He flies 20km in a short time, then he's landing and getting dragged in the dust. The clouds are getting wild, the retrieve vehicle reports that they are being rained on when they are 20km behind me. The clouds build and build.

A dark thunderstorm cell begins to spread at my back. I don't like the risk I'm running. A gust front from the storm will be added to the current wind, which is already right at the limit of safety. As it is I'll be landing going slightly backwards. The clouds begin to close on me from both sides, and I fly straight on full speed, then with the wingtips tucked in for a faster descent. I radio my intentions to land beside a tar road 20km ahead.

The landing is surprisingly safe. I spiral down hard to get to my road before being blown past it, then when I level out and push down into the lower level of air, the wind is only 35kmh or so. I come down vertically and front tuck the wing into the bushes. Whew! 50km and safe is better than 100km and dangerous.

With a hurried pack job, I barely make it under the bush before the rain comes down. When it passes I walk to the end of the road and witness the approaching thunderstorms. The day has gone from blue skies to totally unflyable in two hours.

What totally blows me away later, is that the Swiss are still flying on this day. Alfredo was slightly ahead of me in the same air, and continued to fly until 4pm. Andre came from behind, and passed close over my position at a time when I was making a video of the 60km/h+ gust front that was blasting dust off the ground and the towering cumulonimbus clouds. It was totally overdeveloped. I got drenched with rain while I waited for my retrieve. Cloudbase was low, around 3500m.

We are trying too hard to break the record, I think. It's just too wet and too risky. This is the last day for the South Africans .. we have been at it for two weeks, and we return home tomorrow.  

Thanks to Ewa for the photos .. check out her German blog on www.ewawisnierska.com  

Four days earlier, some pilots had come to the Pan and found it 1 metre deep with water. The Sink Monster must have visited the pan, because when we arrived, it looked like this.

Dry dry dry. It's an amazing landscape, very surreal. Some locals whizzed by on their bikes.

When you pull up a glider on the pan, it feels as if you're standing on some faraway planet, or you're in a movie set, or something. The wind was perfect, smooth, steady, and almost too strong.

We towed up with the last of the day's light casting soft colours on the distant thunderstorms.

We'd come for the legendary Pan Party, but there were only a few tired looking locals and some abandoned tents. Aah. The party was last night. We are one day too late. So we went out into the middle of the pan, and, as South Africans do, we had a braai.

There's quite an art to cremating meat for 7 people with a small bag of charcoal. First you have to find a rock for either side of the grid, and in this place you can walk for a long long way and find nothing. Then you need to get the coals glowing (I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down). Then you have to drink lots of wine and regularly forget to turn the meat and fight with the foil-wrapped vegetables who smother the coals like cockroaches. We were hungry enough. It tasted great.

We slept under the stars. As usual, it got coldest at about 3 in the morning, when the wind changed direction and came whistling through. But that's part of what makes it special to be there .. it's remote, and harsh, and elemental.

So you wake up and see the trees shaking outside. We hurry to get to the runway, even though we mostly know already .. it's too strong. On the runway the crows are having a hard time heading into wind at times. There are lulls where the wind drops to 20km/h, and Ewa wants to fly, but Pete and Greg feel it's too strong for safety. Arnold agrees, Des says she won't fly in this but would consider winching somebody up if they wanted to fly.

"Don't you think it's a bit borderline even for towing?" I ask her.

"Yes, it's borderline."

We all look undecided as the wind drops to 20 again, then the thermal that was blocking the wind comes through and the car doors are slammed shut by the 45km gust. It's maybe possible to winch up, although the tow vehicle won't need to drive forward at all - you could clip onto the line and just let it pay out as you go backwards. 

So out with the Official Paragliding World Cup Sport of hackysack.

Ewa proves that she's a true PWC pilot.

After a while I get undecided again. I know it's flipping strong, but you know, those clouds are drifting by at 3000m, and this might be a record day, because you'd cover ground so quickly. I go and speak to the most experienced pilots in the area, Des and Arnold. 

Ja, you can see. They don't think much of this day. And truth be told, if you're asking other pilots if they think it's flyable, you already know it isn't flyable.

There are a couple of problems with this day. The wind is strong at ground level, but higher up it's weak. We can see the tops of the clouds are lagging behind the bases, meaning the wind gets lighter upstairs. That's the wrong kind of wind gradient - we want strong wind at the top and light wind at the bottom. With the way it is today, you're taking a big risk whenever you're near the ground (takeoff, landings) because the strong wind pushes you backwards and you get more turbulence than normal. Then when you get up, after taking all that risk, you don't fly that far because the wind at altitude is so light.

The second problem is the forecast for thunderstorms along the line of mountains to our south. This means by the time we get there the clouds will be drawing air in too, which will make the wind stronger. The forecast is for increased strength later in the day anyway.

The third problem is due to our position .. for a NW wind we are just too close to the mountains and the coast. Taking a record-flight distance South from De aar, you have to cross the mountains at Middelburg, Cradock, and go past Bedford, where you'll hit the seabreeze SE which comes through most days. I suppose we could have fixed the location problem by driving up to Prieska as the Swiss team have done, but the weather forecast also warned of a belt of thunderstorms close to Prieska.

It's a real pity because we're very ready for going far now .. we've tested our gear, we're into the rhythym of flying every day and our retrieve driver knows his stuff, he's even learned how to tow us up. So we have to be careful to make the right safety call, because we're so keen to fly.

I spent some time trying to make a video of the wind, but the funny thing is when you video a turning windmill on a digital camera you get a windmill that looks like it isn't turning, due to the blades being in similar position every 1/30th of a second, which is the video speed. So you can have a photo instead ..

If you make a squeaky noise in your throat and hyperventilate you'll get the soundtrack for the windmill. That's Leon's tent .. busy having a fun holiday for the whole family. He's here for big distance flying for a month or so, and he's in the right place, right next to the runway. no record day is going to slip past this pilot. But when it rained so hard the other day with the thunderstorms, their spot in the shade under the trees became a mudbath, so now they're out in the full sun, with the dusty wind pulling past all day. Sorry kids, it's not quite Disneyland, but there's a crow you can throw stones at ...