I can see 3 steps before ice breaking up: time for "Moon Boots", "ski", then "rubber boots". I'm now between 2nd and 3rd periods. Impossible to leave Vagabond evading gravity laws. Without my skis, I would easily sink up to my knees, wetting up my shoes not so much water proof. That’s putting it mildly: there is water everywhere! And sometimes well hidden under porous and not much load-bearing snow. Vagabond could almost float, if I look how is the sea taking her rights again. Logically, that’s what ought to happen, but the boat is aground on a thick layer of ice. With all that water, liquid, solid as well as gaseous (horizon is becoming leaden with fog), it is hard to imagine that Svalbard is a (arctic) desert. Annual precipitations are sometimes less than 180 mm (650 mm per year average in Paris, editor’s note)! (Sébastien Barrault, transl. EB)