Havila's Castor ship dropped me off at Finnsnes port just befor five a. m. On bord I had slept less than three hours, but it was a deep, restful kind of sleep so I felt fresh when I left the boat. The goal of the day was reaching Stokmarknes where I had optimistically booked a hotel room before falling asleep. Distance wise it was more than feasible and under ideal conditions I should arrive with plenty of buffer time left. Unfortunately, today nothing was really anywhere near ideal.

The bad luck started when a quiet coastal road that I wanted to take near Skoelva, about 20 km into the ride, turned out to be one long construction site. It was explicitly open to traffic during day hours so took the road, which promised little traffic and a fantastic view of the sea, regardless of the missing tarmac. Big mistake. About ten minutes later I noticed my rear tire had punctured. I was almost down to the rim and there was tubeless sealant everywhere on the fender, the seattube and the chainstay. I stopped to inspect the mess. There was one hole of about 3 mm in the middle of the tire; sealant was still leaking. Which was puzzling as earlier punctures in this tire that I got during the Seven Serpents last year had sealed almost instantly without me even noticing. I only realized later from the sealant residue that they were even there.

This one however wouldn't seal. Air came sizzing out, creating bubbles of sealant over the hole. I tried the obvious tricks like slowly rotating the tire and keeping it still with the hole at the lowest point. To no avail. Whenever it looked like the hole was closed, it would reopen and leak again after pumping it up to about 2.5 bar. It looked really bad. I feared I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. There actually is one bus line that serves this road, but it runs only once per day in each direction. Well at least that meant I had a second exit strategy, after putting a tube in the tire. Neither option seemed very appealing so I kept trying to make the sealant do its job.

After a few cycles of waiting patiently and re-inflating I noticed the puncture would remain mostly shut at around 1 bar. So I left it at that and started pushing the bike to the end of the construction site. Most of the air stayed inside. That was good news, but I still wasn't even close to confident enough to mount the bike again. The bad news was that the next kilometer and a half on the route went through a tunnel. It was lit brightly inside and had one of those push buttons for cyclists to alert drivers of their presence. That was reassuring. I pushed the button and went in. Luckily in the roundabout ten minutes that it took me to pass the tunnel, only a single car came through. Still I felt a little uncanny walking around underground.

When I re-emerged on the other side I checked the pressure in the tire and it looked good. I inflated it just a little more, but still to less than 1.5 bar, and got back on the bike. Amazingly, the air remained inside. During the next kilometers I frequently stopped to check the pressure and whether more sealant was leaking. I couldn't assess how much sealant was still remaining.` For all I knew most of it had sprayed out before I realized what happened. I was very worried that if I caused the puncture to reopen by overinflating it, it might not seal again at all. Therefore I kept riding with that ultra low pressure, going ultra slowly and cautiously to prevent rim damage or unseating of the tire. After ten kilometers, the tire was still inflated. Same after twenty kilometers. It still seemed to be leaking air, albeit very slowly. I got more and more confident that like this I would make it at least to Harstad where I could by some more sealant, and I didn't have to put a tube in.

Race to the Ferries

Dealing with the puncture set me back more than two hours on my plan, and I had to go slower for at least some time due to the risky low pressure that I was running now. It was clear I'd never make the 10 a.m. sailing of the ferry from Sorrollnes to Harstad. The 1:50 p.m. one seemed more realistic, but I had to ride all the way without stopping. The road to that ferry leads over a bridge to the island of Andorja, and then through an undersea tunnel to the island of Rolla. That sounds faily straightforward, except that the route turned out unexpectedly hilly with a fair number of steep climbs -- in particular, the climb out of the undersea tunnel is a real beast, going from negative 114 meters to 67 m above sea level on a 10 percent gradient. While I was battling the hills in the final kilometers, cars kept passing me going towards the ferry which meant that the departure was getting closer. The islands successively got more exposed and I was riding in a full-on headwind with occasional rain. The tension was unreal. Now a stream of cars was coming in the opposite direction, indicating that the incoming sailing had unloaded its cargo. At that point I was going as fast as I physically could, nevermind the wonky rear tire. When I first spotted the pier from a hill at about one kilometer distance, I realized I was too late: the boat had just started moving. That was close, but I have to accept that in this game of ferry racing I'm no Victor Bosoni.

The missed ferry meant another one and a half hours lost. At least there was a warm waiting room at the pier where I could relax, make tea, and dry out. While I was waiting a group of vintage car drivers kept arriving. There was so many of them that the parking lot overflowed, and loading them on the ferry took ages, delaying the sailing.

In Harstad I had planned to visit as many bike shops it would take to get some more sealant. It took two stops: The first one was a large Intersport shop in a department store. The two folks in the bike workshop there were clueless, they hadn't even hear of tubeless tires. No sealant on the shelves either. However the they referred me to Leon's bike shop, which I am eternally grateful for as Leon appears to be the man in Harstad when comes to bikes. Despite arriving after his opening hours, he beckoned me to come in from his workshop and sold me some sealant. This was about the first positive thing I experienced all day.

About forty kilometers from Harstad the next ferry was awaiting me. I was aiming at the 19:00 h sailing, but even without the forced shopping spree it would have been close. Again the route proved annoyingly hilly with headwind in all directions. The rain had picked up in the foggy sound and I was soaked by the time I first spotted the ferry. Which at that point had just left the port. Bummer. The next ferry wouldn't come for another hour, which meant that I was unlikely to make the closing time for the check-in at the hotel in Stokmarknes. Worse, this pier had no waiting room. My only option was to wait in the small toilet building, standing.

Rescued

While I was washing my smelly feet in the toilet