You can listen to Brian's press conference by clicking here ... 

Here are some of the highlights:

It’s absolutely fantastic to be on dry land and to arrive back on such a beautiful day, and with so many family and friends and public who’ve come to welcome me back. It’s a little bit strange, but this is where the race started and les Sables is such a fantastic place and the people are so friendly and it feels like I’m back home again. The start was not the best start I’ve ever had. I was not that near the front and I had too many people on my boat 3 minutes before the start and they’re supposed to get off 4 minutes before. So there was some misunderstanding about the timing of the start. It was a very difficult start, straight into big seas from the very beginning. And you think, oh is the whole race going to be like this?

I took a penalty for the problem with the people on board and the penalty was 4 hours, but because of the place where I had to take the penalty it cost me 500 miles to where Dominique Wavre was. Interestingly perhaps it was a good thing in a strange way as I was out of the leading pack and I was then able to sail my own race. I’m still not too happy about the penalty but the leading boats were all racing each other and going faster and faster until there were only 2 left.

In the southern ocean I had a lot of repairs to do. One time I was doing repairs down below for 3 days solid, going quite slowly to make sure the boat did not move too much so that the repairs would solidify. I think I sent an email to a sponsor Andrew Pindar and said near the Kerguelen Islands I thought I could get in the top 5. I could see a lot of attrition at the front of the fleet.

There was actually one big storm before Cape Horn, then I thought Cape Horn would be the deliverance to better weather, but actually the biggest storm of the race was after Cape Horn. This storm was so bad that the race committee looked at the weather with Météo France, and called me and said Brian I think you should turn around and hide behind Staten Island, and that shows how great the race committee is and how they take care of us. Because at that point I didn’t have a lot of weather information, so maybe their actions saved my life

In the South Atlantic ,I was 2nd fastest and then I was stopped for nearly 24 hours, so I was very lucky and sailed a good course up there. I was hoping to get the record for that, but of course Michel Desjoyeaux got it. After my good run in the South Atlantic, in the Doldrums, after using my keel so much the hydraulics started to fail and that was a problem all the way from the Doldrums to the finish here. I couldn’t really use the full potential of the boat in reaching conditions. It was incredible, as on the very last night of the race, last night, the two rams became disengaged from the keel, because the bolts broke. It shows you how lucky I’ve been to finish this race and very fortunate to be back in les Sables, and very happy to be in 5th place.

The boat is a very good boat, very strong, very new, so little problems became big problems in the Vendee Globe, but normally we’d have had more time to test things beforehand. I’ve had to learn about lots of new things, and also I’ve had a lot of support from my shore team and also from experts all around the world who’ve given up their time to be on the end of the phone. It was definitely a team effort, but I’m very happy that I kept pushing and kept trying to over come each obstacle and get to the finish in les sables and my goal in the beginning was to get in the top 5 and finish and I did it.

I’ve sailed around the world twice on big catamarans, and I thought that would prepare me for the Vendée Globe, but still the Vendee Globe is much much harder than you can possibly imagine. And those times like having to go up the mast by yourself, which you don’t have to do with a crew, are the most difficult moments. And also it takes longer, and you see much more bad weather, than in a maxi catamaran which goes much faster and in the south sees with only one weather system for many days or even weeks, but on our boats we see more weather and bigger storms.

I would really like to see a Bahraini sailor in the Vendee Globe, and I think 8 years would probably be the right amount of time. It would be possible in 4 years. There are some very good sailors in Bahrain, but to get the offshore experience, 2016 would be ideal.

The race is much bigger, better organised, and much tougher than any other race, and more than I ever could have imagined