Wild ride south

The start of our fourth leg of the Shetland Round Britain and Ireland certainly will be remembered, it was so windy in the marina in Lerwick that two ribs combined were struggling to get us off the pontoon we were on, a few boats had been slightly dented in previous manouvres so now the cavalry was called upon. About half an hour before our start time a huge tug slowly approached SunGard Front Arena and two chaps at the bow threw us a line, you those with a weighted ball at the end, so we could retreive the tow line... Tugs normally assist container ships docking and undocking and have tremendously powerful engines; it was quite a spectacle and all bystanders rushed to their camera to take a snap of the oddity. We were towed out, we set sail and started at our allocated time, slightly apprehensive at the forecast of gale force 9 winds. Left harbour, out in the bay a nasty surprise, the bilges were full of diesel. Now, if you suffer from sea sickness please look away now as i had to go down on my knees and sponge out 2 buckets of diesel, found the cause of the leak (the bleeding nut had come loose) then washed away the bilges with water and washing up liquid. From then on we have been riding the north sea, in an unofficial pattern we hand-steer two hours each as autopilots cannot cope with this sea, its' bitterly cold with the northerly wind but the progress is good. The wind is very variable and so our speed, in the lulls we are a bit slow but then we get hit by gusts of up to 45 knots of wind and we fly off, we set an new max speed on the instruments of 20.2 knots. Surfing down the waves with a 40 ft racing boat is absolutely awesome, the boat takes off and you zig-zag the waves trying to keep the boat on a surf, spray flies everywhere as you hold the tiller with a grin. From the position reports i see Fujifilm is again on our neck, we're further south but he's further west, too close to call... we'll just have to keep pushing.