Winter solstice, northern lights and moonlight.

Vagabond is securely set up for winter, frozen in a beautiful pack ice (60cm thick already). After the solstice, days are getting longer! Before the sun returns, mid-January, our family crew will celebrate Christmas and New Year with the Inuit community of Qikiqtarjuaq, on the East coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut (Canada).

After the solstice, days are getting longer!

First collect of ice from a nearby iceberg, to get good fresh water. We filled up a second container in the river that still flows under the snow, south of the village.

A lot of northern lights these days.

One night, an Arctic hare toured the boat and explore the surrounding area, probably disappointed to find nothing to put in his mouth!

Johnny is proud to be the first to come to Vagabond by truck this year! Two days later, Steevie came to pick up the girls to go to school, without warning! By kindness and for the pleasure of driving on the ice with his new car.

Burger and seal meat party at local Coffee Shop, re-opened a few days ago and which offers snacks, soft drinks, teas and coffees. The building rented as a base camp for Green Edge project is unrecognizable!

On the way home after school, we meet fresh polar bear tracks, not far from Vagabond. He played with a dead raven, probably the one that was hanging on the fence of Johnny's dog yard, on the nearby peninsula, to scare away other ravens. Time for us to have dogs, to warn us in case of a visit, especially in this polar night period. Mary and Sam give us Anuu, he adapts quickly to his new environment.

Two days work to disassemble the engine of one of Takuvik's snowmobile, which must be repaired before the start of GreenEdge 2016.

The crate delivered by boat in September, is finally brought to the boat: 400kg of grocery and dog food, ordered last June!

In order to record stories from Qikiqtarjuaq inhabitants, especially about their food from hunting and fishing, Michele Therrien and Julie Sansoulet came for a few days to prepare workshops that will take place in May. These studies are part of the GreenEdge project which will continue next spring to study the spring phytoplankton bloom, the origin of the food chain.

Michele has learnt Inuktitut in Nunavik (northern Quebec), and then has been teaching it for a long time. Her knowledge on Inuit language and culture is amazing for our friends from Qikiqtarjuaq, as well as her passion for stories! She offers us the opportunity to share more with elders who do not speak English, we are very happy to know them better, and vice versa.

Sunday, while Michele and Julie were on board Vagabond, we had the visit from Pauloosie Keyootak member of the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut. Due to lack of seat in the plane, he could not join us last Wednesday for an important meeting at the Nunavut Research Institute in Iqaluit, we gave him a brief report. Then his wife Alice decided to pose with him for a photograph in front of our small Christmas tree!