Sara Lane Wright's hopes of sailing success were sunk even before she took to the water in France this week.

The Bermudian -- competing in the prestigious Semaine Olympique Francaise in Hyeres -- had been hoping to be among the leaders in the Europe Class after a fine outing in Spain recently.

However, with two days still to go she has recorded some of her worst finishes so far this year and until yesterday was left scratching her head as to why.

After four days the Bermudian, languishing in 39th place, had analysed every aspect of her race strategy without being able to pinpoint the problem.

That was until she came ashore last night.

While Wright had been criticising herself, it was, in fact, her boat that was at the centre of the problem.

An accident en route to France had led to her vessel taking on water, dramatically slowing her progress in process.

"My boat had been filling up with water in one of the side tanks and I hadn't realised,'' Wright said from her French base. "We didn't discover it until now but I had about 20 litres of water in the boat.'' "Today was my worst result. By the second race my boat was so full of water that I came 10th from last and I had had a really super, great start. It was like I was going backwards.

"When I came ashore I was like `there has to be something wrong with the boat'. It was just too drastic.'' It was then that Wright made the discovery.

"I would drain water out of my boat but not out of the side tank. It was leaking into my front tank so I was draining that because usually my side tanks are always perfectly dry. I just never thought I had water in them.

"And so when I came in today it was just eughh...,'' she said. Wright said the past few days had taken a lot out of her.

"Mentally I fell apart quite a few times. In my last regatta I was using the same equipment and I had improved 40 per cent on last year. When I was in the Gold Fleet I was top at the weather mark and sailing really well, so I had made a huge improvement,'' she said.

"When I came here I thought I would just hop back in the boat and start from where I left off.'' Unfortunately fate was to decree otherwise. "It was more humiliating than anything,'' she said. "Last year I wasn't in the top half of the fleet and it was very hard to go to the regattas in my first year in the Europe, and so coming back here and being at the back of the fleet again was horrible especially as I couldn't figure out why.'' Wright has four races left and hopes to restore some pride before the regatta ends and she heads home for International Race Week.

"I'll just chalk it up to experience,'' said the sailor, for whom this event is fast turning out to be one of her least favourites. "It's unfortunate because this time last year I came here and was sick. I was totally burned out as it was the first time I had done the circuit.'' Nasty shock: Sara Lane Wright discovered a hole in her boat.