It is always good to get the first race of the season out the way to know where you are within the fleet and what you need to work on before the start of the big one, La Solitaire du Figaro writes Kingswear sailor Henry Bomby.

Unfortunately for me the Solo Maitre Coq 2014 proved an uphill struggle from the start.

Less than a minute after leaving the dock I went to put the autopilot on to hoist the main, and all of a sudden the electronics started beeping away at me.

Having never had a problem with my electronics all winter, I suddenly had no pilot, the computer crashed, GPS lost connection to the computer and error functions appeared on each different display. I was gutted.

This wasn't the first time this had happened and I couldn't believe it had happened again.

Luckily while out in the start area, I plugged in the second computer or 'brain' for the boat and found that this was working, so along with the emergency tiller pilot I was able to start the race with some instruments and no constant bleeping.

Luck was on my side, however, and during the first night there was a park up of the whole fleet at Ile de Yeu.

I was now back in the pack and by now I had gotten over the disappointment of before and so was just keen to attack for as long as I could, to see how well I could do and to use the race as the best training I could.

Over the next 24 hours I probably sailed the best I have ever done in the Figaro. I was able to pass boats throughout the day and kept working my way up the fleet to just outside the top 10, and at my peak, just inside it.

However, slowly but surely I started losing touch with the main pack, which after all the work of the past 24 hours was depressing.

I was plotting my position using my handheld GPS and after managing to get my kite on the bow and hoisted, I set about following the other lights back to Les Sables and the finish.

I put the emergency pilot on quickly to just do one last check of my position.

As the waypoint appeared on the screen showing exactly where I was my heart stopped.

It was showing me literally 100m off the rocks off the southern most tip of Ile de Yeu. I sprinted on deck, threw the pilot off the tiller and gybed the boat as fast as I could. I could now hear the waves crashing on the rocks and the thought of how close I came to totalling the boat is a scary one.

So the race wasn't the result that I was looking for, but it was a productive training race and there are lots of positives to take from it.