December 19

Yesterday, the 18th, we flew from Springbok to a junction on the N358, the site of our first `bush camp`. Dav and Mathieu were the only two pilots to make goal; high winds and a very stable atmosphere saw the rest of the team landing near the Springbok Airfield, where we continued to get to know the winch team and the conditions. The conditions… the conditions were hot! As in Africa hot, hair dryer dry, and far too windy for comfort.

This morning, the 19th, the wind slackened just enough for the entire team to launch from directly in front of our campsite and fly XC into the Karoo. We set up our gliders directly on the dusty road and towed up into a dry atmosphere and steadily increasing southwest winds. Immediately after launch, Dav towed into the middle of an evil dust devil and found himself looking down at his wing, with his leading edge pointed at the ground and still being towed by the truck. Thys, our intrepid winch operator, cut the line just as Dav was starting to think about using his reserve parachute. Unfazed, he released the dangling tow line and caught a thermal, disappearing into the massive sky downwind of us. The whole team towed up and followed, drifting down the road spaced widely apart. The wind was strong and the lift was mostly light, so we found ourselves covering ground at up to 45kmh while circling in thermals- we were flying cross country faster while turning in thermals than our gliders fly at trim speed! Several of us recorded ground speeds of up to 80kmh at altitude, and before too long the forecasted southwest wind came through and forced us all to land before 3pm. As the lift shut off and the surface wind increased to a most uncomfortable rate of 50kmh, Matt and Mathieu landed, pointing into the wind but going backwards, 80km from camp. The region that we are flying in now is several hundred kilometers west and north of the most popular XC sites in South Africa and has its own weather, which meant that today we were the only group of XC pilots to get good flying in the country. In De Aar, surface winds were 50kmh from the beginning of the morning, preventing anyone from flying there, and Kuruman sat beneath a massive line of overdevelopment. It was an excellent first day of XC flying in the Karoo.

As the howling southwest wind settled in, we made our way southeast in the safari truck. We stopped for lunch at a desolate salt flat, watched the sun set on the savannah in an explosion of warmth, and rolled into a lonely desert town called Brandvlei just after dark. We`re now sitting in the `Windpompe` South Africa`s 2nd most famous restaurant (according to our gregarious and very extroverted bartender) plotting tomorrows flights which will commence from the Brandvlei airstrip. Cheers from the central Karoo Desert, where the boss has just taken us on a tour of the wine cellar and promised us strange foreigners the best of South African wines!

We`re updating this using a 9.6k mobile internet connection, which is far too slow for photos! We`ll get you some images as soon as we can find a real internet connection.

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