Léonie, Aurore and I meet up with Eric, his crew and Vagabond in Narsarsuaq, having moved from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. We step off our friend Hubert's Pilatus PC-12 onto the Greenland tarmac, and after a joyful evening and night on Vagabond, its super-pilots Georges and Sophie take off again with our four delighted Saint-Pierrais for a lovely return flight! Our family crew is ready to welcome the geologists.

This year is very different from summer 2023, even if Laurent Geoffroy is still the leader. The instruments to be set up on last year's well-studied terrain arrived by cargo ship in spring. The instruments? Stations equipped with seismometers, to detect the earth's internal movements, to be installed for one year on carefully studied sites, constituting a system of two transects over a hundred kilometers.

We are now in phase 2 of the investigation that begun last summer into the astonishing formation of this south of Greenland region!

As the cargo ship has dropped off the IPEV container with all the equipment in Narsaq, we converge there after each installation. Vagabond becomes heavier at each rotation when carrying 3 stations: concrete blocks and batteries are our mainstays as the equipment is loaded and unloaded! There are 15 in all. Laurent is accompanied by Christian Schiffer, a geophysicist expert with these seismometers. He is German and Danish, and lives in Sweden. The 6 of us enjoy a friendly and active atmosphere on board Vagabond!

After three weeks, all 15 stations are installed and Christian is leaving. It's time for us to welcome on board Marie and Charlie, a fine artistic team of women who have come to immerse themselves in the place and in the feelings of our daughters, in order to feed the script of their animated film project: the story of a little girl who embarks on a scientific ship with her captain father, in the Arctic...!

Laurent, always on the lookout for geological clues, takes us to the paradisiacal bay of Tasiussaq, reached after a slow progression through the luminous mist of an iceberg-laden fjord. After visiting an isolated farm, the girls go for a swim in a low-lying lake, while Laurent and Eric take a geological tour of the vast bay.

A few days before our departure by plane, leaving Vagabond wisely moored in the port of Narsaq under the watchful eye of our friends Paul and Monika, a moderate earthquake - a rare occurrence in the region - is shaking us... less than 8 days after the instruments had been installed. How wonderful!

About Protero-Litho2 project.

Showing the film Children of the cold at the Narsaq Community Center (Greenland) at 7pm.

4.5 earthquake felt on board Vagabond, docked in Narsaq, 10 days after completing the installation of the 15 seismic stations of the Protero-Litho2 project!

June 26: family, friends and music on Eric Tabarly pier... Many emotions as I leave the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago after 3 years full of encounters and discoveries. To soften this big departure, I'm accompanied by 4 friends from the French Islands: Maryline Lecourtois, Rachel Robert, Hoel Chaigne and Vincent Rinaldo. Report, by SPM la 1ère.

Despite tricky conditions (weather, remote location...), Vagabond has been pampered in recent months. The sea was rough as soon as we left the harbour, but we set off calmly. Getting our sea legs was not smooth for all of us!

Logistical stopover in St-John's in Newfounland, where we welcome on board paleoclimatologists Minoli Dias, head of the scientific program, and Natasha Leclerc, assistant and diver. They have already been on board Vagabond to collect coralline algae in Greenland and Nunavut, and it's a pleasure to be reunited for this new project after lengthy preparations (funding, logistics, permits and authorizations...).

July 3, 9pm: Vagabond docks for the night at the village of Hopedale in Labrador. Final preparations and meeting with our community contacts before heading off the next morning to the dive site 20km east of the village.

For the past 10 years, Vagabond and its crew have been collecting coralline algae for Jochen Halfar of the University of Toronto and his colleagues. This usually involves prospecting by studying maps and satellite images first, then using a camera operated from Vagabond's tender. When these searches are fruitful, I dive the site with hammer, chisel and net, usually with a teammate, to try and collect the healthiest and thickest coralline samples possible.

This year there are 4 of us, and the site is already known for record samples. For a week, Vagabond stays at anchor and one dive follows another. The water is cold, visibility sometimes quite poor, but the team is united and the collection exceeds all our ambitions: more than half a ton of coralline is brought up on deck! A considerable amount of sorting is necessary, and Minoli ends up keeping 304 kg of samples, which will be transported all the way to her laboratory in Toronto.

Minoli and Natasha leave Hopedale on July 9, heavily laden but very satisfied, while my Saint-Pierre's crew continues with me for a 4-day crossing to Greenland. Drifting ice pach is blocking the entrance to the fjords, so we have to skirt around them to the north and battle our way through the pack ice to reach the entrance to the Ikersuaq fjord. We reach Narsaq on July 14th!

Article: UTM researcher tracking 1,000 years of sea ice change in hopes of predicting future conditions.

Coralline collection led by Minoli Dias and Natasha Leclerc (University of Toronto), from 3 to 10 July 2024, near Hopedale, Labrador.

Report on Vagabond's departure, by Saint-Pierre and Miquelon La 1ère.

Scientific dives in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon with Laurent Chauvaud to install a current meter (ADCP) and release scallops (placopecten magellanicus) fitted with sensors.