Jean-Louis Etienne told reporters at the scene of the accident that his planned trip to measure the thickness of the Arctic ice cap "won't be taking place with this vehicle, and there is no other".

Etienne's Total Pole Airship, built in Russia over the past three years with sponsorship from the French oil giant Total, was ripped from its docking station by a powerful gust of wind early Tuesday morning.

"I feel like crying... it's a huge disappointment," he said.

Separately, the 10-member crew of a French sailboat that has spent more than 500 days trapped in the Arctic broke free of polar ice this week and started heading home.

Part of a European scientific mission called Damocles, the Tara was sent to study climate variations in the Arctic waters, ice and atmosphere as part of the International Polar Year in 2007-2008.

It became trapped in the ice sheet northeast of Siberia in September 2006, and has since drifted several thousand kilometres, carried by shifting blocks of ice to a point between Greenland and Norway's Svalbard archipelago.

On Sunday the boat entered a large expanse of free-moving water, and was able to start an engine and begin pushing its way eastwards between the ice blocks, the operation's logistics chief Romain Trouble told AFP.

Loaded with 60 tonnes of scientific equipment, and difficult to manoeuvre, the Tara is expected to arrive in Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, by Thursday night.

From there it is expected home in France within a month.

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