Irish sailor Enda O'Coineen has revealed he had to tip his boat onto its side and climb out on to the rudder to dislodged a tangled sail.
The Galway man is in the Indian Ocean at the moment as he circumnavigates the world alone as part of the Vendée Globe race.
In a video posted over the weekend, O'Coineen said the end of his fifth week at seas had been "a really hard day."
"The spinnaker sheet jammed around the rudder and I couldn't free it," he said.
"I did an Alex Thompson on it. Tipped the boat on its side, cantilevered the keel across and sailed along at an angle.
"I climbed out over the stern of the boat onto the rudder and eventually pulled it free. It was pretty scary on the edge."
O'Coineen left the French port of Les Sables d’Olonne on 6 November in his 60m Kilcullen Voyager craft.
His aim is just to complete the gruelling race but he currently ranks 15th of 22 remaining competitors. Seven sailors have already been forced to abandon the competition.
The quadrennial event involves rounding the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Cape Leeuwin in Southern Australia and Cape Horn at the tip of South America.
Participants sail twice in the North and South Atlantic – on the way down and on the way back – and sail around Antarctica by crossing the Indian Ocean and the huge Pacific.
