PHIL SHARP has breathed a huge sigh of relief as he prepares for the second leg of the 4,300-mile Mini Transat race in Lanzarote.

For, after having taken a knife to his medium spinnaker after it became tangled under his Le Gallais 419 boat, he feared that he would have to buy a new one when he arrived in the Canary Islands in fourth place after the 1,350 mile single-handed trip from La Rochelle.

And that would have cost him a 24-hour penalty on the next leg to Santiago in Brazil which begins tomorrow afternoon.

But a sailmaker in the port managed to piece the canvas back together and also repair Sharp’s big spinnaker that split in the first leg but which he managed to repair with sticky tape during a long and sleepless night.

The irony is that the weather forecast is for an upwind breeze for most of the trip.

And that means Sharp and the rest of the 72-strong fleet won’t be needing their spinnakers for a lot of the time.

‘I wouldn’t have taken a 24-hour penalty,’ said Sharp.

‘I’d have gone without it rather than that.

It’s a good bonus having the sail back, though.

And being upwind means I should be able to sleep better because the boat will be a lot more stable – I suffered pretty badly from sleep deprivation in the first leg.

‘But it means it could be a long leg of around 25 days.

There’s a lack of trade winds at the moment because there’s a big depression over the Atlantic.’ Full story in today’s JEP.