To celebrate summer, no midnight sun due to more bad weather! This does not stop our local friends to go camping and fishing, especially since Arctic Chars just left the lakes to reach the sea. Fishing trips are followed by drying and smoking sessions.

Yesterday, between two heavy snowfalls (!), France and I went to recover the weather station set up on the ice last March for Takuvik. We were surrounded by seals lying on the ice beside their holes. All scientific equipment was finally brought back to Qikiqtarjuaq.

While I was sending the latest weather and current data, Marcel Babin, director of Takuvik, asked me this morning to "think about the feasibility of pursuing a re-sized sampling of the bloom... With a zodiac? Other?". Ideally a hovercraft!

The ice condition now requires detours, especially to go from the boat to the village by snowmobile. Surprisingly, the ice is white again, and fresh snow is hiding melt ponds. Hoping that it does not hide real holes, such as those near the village, where the ice has been fully eroded by currents.

Time for clean up, maintenance, preparing Vagabond for the boating season, and getting supplies. We are ordering for the summer and even next winter: the two ships supplying Qikiqtarjuaq once a year will leave Québec soon (Desgagnés and NEAS). Smaller packages sometimes arrive in the mail, from southern Canada or from Europe. Mid-July, while the ice-breaker Amundsen will sail off Broughton Island, her helicopter will come to pick up all samples and some equipment. In the same time, we will get parts for Vagabond's engines. As for Aurore, she just received, from an Iqaluit (Nunavut's capital) priest, a pair of the right size rubber boots, impossible to find in Qikiqtarjuaq!

Vagabond is getting supplies also thanks to our partners (Celnat, Even, Hénaff) and to our friends sailors. A few boxes are waiting for us in Nuuk (capital of Greenland), they came all the way from Brittany on board WHY. Other supplies are en route to Tasiilaq (Greenland), aboard Algol. At last, in the geologists drums, now getting ready in Brest, there will be more supplies and equipment for Vagabond. These drums will embark with the scientists in August in Greenland, and will be send back to Brest, after the mission, loaded with rock samples!