Sailing schoolboy Mike Perham,16, who set off from Falmouth on 18 November hoping to become the youngest, solo, non-stop circumnavigator is set to re-start his record.

After two test sails in and around Gran Canaria his boat Totallymoney.com, an Open 50, is sea-worthy once more.

‘The test sails revealed that the clutch that fed the ballast tanks wasn’t working properly,’ said Mike, ‘Las Palmas is fantastic in that it there is a huge ship repair industry here, so there are so many places to repair bits of kit like this. The mechanics are top rate and turned around all our repairs within a few hours. One guy didn’t even charge us for his fantastic workmanship when we needed to get some new bearings fitted.

This has been a very frustrating time, but of course, it’s much better to sort these things out now than have them out at sea, away from any machine shops. But finally the boat is ready and I am totally raring to go! I should be setting sail very shortly, within the next few hours. I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting.’