For two weeks we have been preparing Vagabond for winter, and also a journey by plane all the way to France. While we will be away, our friends from Grise Fiord will be watching Vagabond and the scientific equipment. Sand and gravel has been piled up around the hull to improve thermal insulation. Two big boxes with grocery came last month for us with one of the two yearly cargo ships. Not long after, the other ship, a tanker, supplied the town with fuel for one year: one million litres of diesel oil and a hundred thousand litres of gas! It is know cold enough to store our frozen products outside. Since Vagabond is on dry land, we made dry toilet; we will have enough sawdust from the new Hamlet office - community hall under construction. Léonie is going to school every day and is improving in English and in Inuktitut. The little pond in the middle of the village is now frozen enough for hockey players, and our daughters are happy skating. Muskox and Arctic hares are many around town, even a polar bear has been roaming around for a week. He found some whale meat and he cannot stop coming back to finish his feast. So I was very careful when I climbed mount Greenlander, just above town. Last week, waves were breaking against the hull: very strange feeling on board a still boat! Sea starts to freeze now, water is becoming thicker at the surface. Snow falls and gales are preventing the plane to come: the 120 Grise Fiord inhabitants are waiting for Thanksgiving turkeys, while we are all set to leave...