Mosaic Leg3 should have started since February 15th. But the replacing team is still on board the Kapitan Dranitsyn, going at an average speed of 1 km/h with 80 tons of fuel per day... The Russian icebreaker left the Norwegian fjords on February 3rd and was expected on the 15th next to the Polarstern for an almost complete crew change (100 people) and to deliver about 40 tons of freight (food and equipment). We even celebrated the end of Leg2 on February 8th, in order to be ready for mid-February handover!

No ship has ever reached the North Pole in winter. All 145 successful voyages since 1977 happened between the end of May and mid October, 81% were done by nuclear icebreakers. Even if the ice thickness and the ice cover have been decreasing spectacularly for the past thirty years, chartering a middle class icebreaker to get close to the North Pole in winter is still a real challenge! If the Kapitan Dranitsyn cannot reach the Polarstern, Mosaic expedition will probably use aerial logistics... Stay tuned on Mosaic blog.

Meanwhile, scientific field work continues, intense and fruitful. The drift keeps taking us to the north-west, the expedition is now North of the 88° parallel at 200 km from the Pole. The sun will not rise before mid March, but the twilight is more and more each day, with Venus nicely visible above the horizon for the last two weeks. In addition to the hiking or skiing trips allowing everyone to go out on the ice, the last full moon was time for another great camping trip with the braves. Very few animals have been seen since we joined the Mosaic expedition mid December: a fish caught in a net by 1000m depth, a seal seen in the ROV hole (underwater remote operated vehicle), a polar bear on a picture near remote sensing instruments, a fox running around Polarstern. Together with nutriments and plankton regularly sampled, the symbolic Arctic food chain is complete, even in the middle of the winter near the North Pole. All are waiting for the light to return.

France, Léonie and Aurore will be back on board Vagabond on March 2nd. I hope to meet them as soon as possible to carry on the scientific program (winter study of the coralline algae) and for the Artists' residence. The end of the winter and spring will be nice and busy, as well as the summer cruise (August and September) which will be following-up the 2019 summer cruise.

On February 9th, Louis was invited to go seal hunting near Arctic Bay. He's telling us about it: "Departure at 8am for hunting with Rex, Olayuk, Tom and Logan. We meet about ten skidoos on the way and when stopping for tea. We go as far as the floe edge, it's great to watch the open sea. Wind is picking up, it's cold. We need more than one hour to get there, the terrain is quite rough due to the strong winds of the past few days. It's -41°C. Cold is biting, even for some Inuit which get a few frostbites, although their are more resistant. We catch 5 seals. We don't waste time and we are back around 17:30 for the volleyball game, but before we meet at Tom's place to eat fresh seal stew with potatoes. The next day, we eat grilled seal meat with barbecue sauce at Rex's place. I sew a parka with help and advice from Rex and Darlene! Sun returned yesterday."

Tom also helped Louis for diving on Saturday. Louis managed to change in his truck, parked on the ice by the diving hole, and he was warm inside to download the loggers data (pH and salinity) between the two dives. Visibility underwater is excellent!

Mosaic expedition keeps going, following the transpolar drift which is getting us slowly closer to the North Pole (less than 300km), and at the pace of a busy scientific program.

At 87°30' latitude North, even during the polar night, northern lights are very rare; we recently observed a green and red one. The full moon was also very beautiful with a penumbral eclipse on January 10th. And the starry sky as well while camping out on the ice last week-end: about twenty scientist accepted my invitation to leave the Polarstern cocoon for a night, to better feel the Arctic Ocean they are studying.

A well educated bear visited carefully part of the numerous instruments deployed on the ice, he didn't do any damage, and he even avoid stepping on the snow under the radiometers that look down at the surface and measure up welling radiations and surface temperature. Only one timelapse camera could see the bear, not long after midnight on January 19th. His foot prints told us about his route.

Ice has been breaking-up quite a bit in the Polarstern surroundings lately. Yesterday, while watching for two teams willing to work on the other side of a crack, ice was squeaking, moaning. Standing by near the opening and pressure zones, with two snowmobiles and three sledges parked on the 'right' side of the crack, I suddenly watched a multiple breaking. Ice was moving under my feet. One sledge ended up like a bridge on top of a one meter wide crack. When I started the snowmobiles, one ski was already touching the water! Luckily the engine was still warm and the machine jumped out of the crack just before sinking (4500m depth...). Simultaneously, a pressure ridge was growing fast, it was time to gather everybody and move back to our vessel. What will become the Mosaic floe?

At Vagabond near Arctic Bay, Louis had some help from one or two seals to keep his diving holes open in the ice and reduce his work before diving! With -36°C yesterday, water probably felt almost warm to him, at -1.8°C. In these conditions, it is a technical and logistical challenge to collect a tenth of coralline samples that were set up on the sea floor last September, and to download data from various loggers measuring light, temperature, salinity and pH. Johan, Leonie's teacher, was there to assist Louis from the surface, and friends from the community to warm up our diver with caribou, Arctic char and seal feast.

After weeks of anticipation, I left the warmth of my heated home and the convenience of big city living to go live on the Vagabond, lone ship trapped in sea ice, near the small and quaint community of Arctic Bay, NU. All of my friends and family feared for my sanity and called me “brave” for relocating my life to the North for close to two months. I didn’t feel brave at all, only that this was something I needed to do for my soul. As I arrived, after 3 days of transit, I was greeted by the Vagabond like an old friend. Other than it being much cooler on-board than it had been during the summer, I thought to myself “Buddy, you haven’t changed a bit”. Since participating in the summer mission I looked back fondly at my time on the Vagabond. It filled me with a thirst for the sea and the Arctic. I finally understood what drew so many people to this “barren land”, it was full of life, in the sea as on land in the communities that speckle its coastlines. So obviously, seeing Vagabond now surrounded with ice was an inviting sight as any. It seemed like no time until Louis and I were breaking ice with the chisel and continuing the scientific program of the year.

The first dive was shall we say… eventful. We were maybe too ambitious for our own good. We wanted to recover 10 algae samples to be used for the monthly growth calibration experiment as well as the environment recording instruments, and calibrate the instruments and to place them back underwater. After setting up the “warm” tent, which felt only slightly warmer than the outside, and preparing the safety line, we quickly got ready for Louis to dive. I guess we had underestimated the cold’s impact on everything. After Louis came back from his first dive, with free-flowing regulators, algae samples, and a few of the instruments (not being able to grab all of them due to cold hands), we realized that the instruments quickly caught cold and were not doing the data transfer. Louis was getting colder waiting for the instrument calibration and we had to make the call to wrap things up, do all the calibration work on-board the Vagabond and come back to set the instruments back up on the experimental platform. The following dives improved in efficiency, while the temperature continued to drop presenting new challenges. Gladly, by this time, we had started to make friends in the community, who helped us.

The people of Arctic Bay were very thoughtful and caring towards us, always offering for us to pop by their houses if ever we got cold or needed a shower. We joked to ourselves, that we must have looked very Vagabond-ish or smelled funny for people to stop us in town to invite us to their house to use their shower. But week by week we felt becoming closer to community in general. During the Christmas games period, the two weeks of nightly dancing and games, we missed maybe one night. Being an only child, Christmas was usually a quieter event. But here, the quiet was replaced by laughter and loud square dancing music. The music filled our ears and even when we weren’t at the games, the music continued playing in our heads until we were back the next night. We were glad that we had friends that could also translate the rules of the games to us, as our Inuktitut was very poor. We enjoyed asking people how they preferred to eat their country food, which we had become fond of, and hearing how many had diverse ways of preparing and enjoying their favorite foods: fried, baked, raw, right after the hunt, frozen, in soup, with barbecue sauce, hot sauce etc. I struggled to thank them enough for their care of us, all I could do was promise I would be back someday.

Kapitan Dranitsyn reached Polarstern on December 13th, at 350 kilometers from North Pole. He left again on December 18th with the previous team, after instructions, fuel, food and equipment transfer. We all (250 peoples) had a party on the ice the evening before, with hot wine and soccer game!

We are now 100 people on board Polarstern, half scientists, for Mosaic Leg 2. Our little international community (18 nationalities), the northernmost in the world, is slowly drifting north with an incredible network of instruments. I'm part of the logistics and safety team, assisting field work on the ice, watching for polar bears, moving equipment disturbed by the drift, looking for new access to scientific sites... There is a good mood on board, despite the cold (-34°C today, -50°C wind chill) and the permanent darkness which some participants are experiencing for the first time. However far from our families and friends, we celebrated the winter solstice, Christmas and New Year!

The journey on board Dranitsyn was memorable. I was on board before, when we met in Greenland in 2001, and we met again in Murmansk in 2002. At that time, I never thought one day I would embark with a bunch of scientists almost to the North Pole, in the night, breaking thicker and thicker ice... Our speed dropped down to 1 knot in the end! Not sure if the Dranitsyn will be able to come back for the next crew change, mid February, and other options are possible: nuclear ice-breaker assistance, Russian helicopters, Canadian planes... Let's see how far the drift will take us first!

Meanwhile, Natasha and Louis are looking after Vagabond, north of Baffin Island. They are also in charge of the monthly dives and water samplings for the scientific program. They are handling better and better the logistics and challenging protocols in the cold polar night, especially when recovering the data from the loggers set up at 15 meters under the ice, next to the coralline samples. After diving on December 28th, Louis said "it was -20°C (-30°C the previous dive), so good to be too warm when getting ready!".

They also take part in the local social life, with the nearby community Arctic Bay. Traditionally, games are organized every day for about two weeks during Christmas and New Year. It is a very friendly time of the year, good to know each other better, to taste some arctic char, frozen caribou or fermented walrus, join some seal hunters, learn how to make a parka or an ulu (women's knife), repair a skidoo, go out skiing with the cadets...

Happy New Year to everyone!

I'm boarding tomorrow morning the Kapitan Dranitsyn (see her position). From Tromso, Leonie's birthplace, and while Aurore is turning 10 years old, I am preparing for a long mission without my family crew... The Russian icebreaker will reach the Mosaic expedition, near the North Pole. About a hundred scientists, technicians and sailors are taking turns every two months aboard the German icebreaker Polarstern for a year-long Arctic drift. I'm member of the second team, which will return to Tromso at the beginning of March.

This is to do a comprehensive study of the Arctic Ocean before it is exploited. The current changes are considerable as currently reported by Mike Horn and Borge Ousland trying to finish their crossing of the Arctic before winter. Very tired and almost out of food, they should be rescued soon. See their position.

Meanwhile, near Arctic Bay, Natasha joined Louis aboard Vagabond. In this protected bay, the pack ice is now thick enough to circulate serenely (about 30cm). Samples of water and coralline continue, but the dive this morning was difficult ... The polar night started mid-November and will last until the end of January, the thermometer reads -23°C. At this time of the year, it's good to share social life in the neighboring village.