DAWSON CITY – Just after 1 p.m. Friday, Eric Braul stood on the shore of the Yukon River in Dawson, looking dazed as he soaked his sore wrists in the cold river water.

It’s one of the pitfalls of paddling, especially if you’re going to do it for 39 hours, eight minutes and 12 seconds.

That’s how long it took Braul and his teammates, Robert Spinks, Mike De Abreu and Sebastien Courville, to paddle their four-man canoe 715 kilometres from Whitehorse to Dawson in the 2022 Yukon River Quest.

Their finishing time is a new race record for the YRQ. The previous record, set in 2008 by team Kisseynew in a voyageur canoe, was 39:32:43.

“It’s impressive,” said race director Mia Lee when the team, Something Else Entirely, came in nearly an hour ahead of the next finisher.

“That’s gonna be a hard one to beat for a long time.”

High water levels definitely helped speed paddlers along in a year when 10 records were smashed in various categories, and it wasn’t uncommon for support crews to miss their boats at checkpoints because of how unexpectedly quickly teams were moving.

However, there were plenty of other conditions to challenge racers.

Lake Laberge had strong headwinds as participants moved along it last Wednesday afternoon, the first day of the race. Squalls came and went, soaking boats in the evening before the skies cleared at 2 a.m.

“When we came up (Lake Laberge), it was so horrible, we were like, ‘a record is out of the question,’” said Spinks after his team’s record- setting run.

He and Courville said the water slowed down in some areas where they expected it to be faster.

The quickest stretch was right before Carmacks. Thirty Mile was reasonable. Five Fingers was, in a word, sketchy, he said, though not everyone had the same experience.

Lincoln Dews is an Australian stand-up paddleboarder who beat the SUP record by more than four hours (it was previously set in 2017 by Bart de Zwart, with a time of 52:16:06).

Dews said he didn’t find the rapids all that bad, though he admits he may have had an advantage.

“I mean, I grew up like that, doing a lot of whitewater rafting and surfing, so it was quite natural,” he said, drinking a beer on the shore after coming in Friday afternoon.

Dews had been aiming to beat the record, though not by as many hours as he did.

He’s known de Zwart since he was a kid, and was shooting for a 50-hour finish.

Dews, who is a three-time Australian SUP champion, said the longest he’d paddled in one stretch before the YRQ was 70 kilometres, so this was a huge jump in mileage.

“This race has kind of got a bit of a cult following, I think,” Dews said, regarding his decision to race.

“There’s a few similar races in Australia and around the world, but nothing quite as extreme as this. And then the Yukon? Everyone wants to come here. It’s just one of those places.”

Boats continued to land in Dawson through the evening, with the last three, two SUPs and a solo kayak) coming in before 2 p.m. Saturday (the cut-off for the race was 9:00 that night).

Team The Girls Next Door, Jacqueline Lewis Octavio and Alysha Coates, both from Whitehorse, pulled past the finish in their tandem canoe at around 7 a.m. Saturday.

The two women had paddled the race once before, in 2019, and said there were a few differences.

It was colder and faster this year, but they liked the new option to split up their mandatory 10-hour rest periods between Carmacks and Minto as they chose, versus having predetermined layovers in those locations.

“Initially our plan was to go through the rapids at 1 a.m.,” said Coates as she unloaded her boat.

“But then with the times and the sun, we were like, ‘oh, we’d actually rather do that at 11:30.’”

The pair had planned to paddle the event in 2021 for Lewis Octavio’s 30th birthday, aiming to improve on their 2019 time by finishing in fewer than 59 hours, but the event was cancelled.

When they rolled up on the riverbank on the dawn of Lewis Octavio’s 31st birthday, they were just shy of 57 hours.

Thinking about how to celebrate both the birthday and the second-place finish for her category though, after almost 60 hours of paddling, the choice was clear.

“I think sleep,” she said. “I turned 30. It’s nap time now.”

Results:

Stand-up paddleboard
Mens SUP
NEW RECORD

1 – Lincoln Dews (Lincoln Dews) 47:46:32
2 – Halfway to Cina (Davide Cina) 49:28:11
3 – Standing Room Only (Jason Bennett) 50:23:54

Womens SUP

1 – Type 2 Fun (LouAnne Harris) 62:36:12
2 – Shara Dubeau (Shara Dubeau) 65:34:50

Solo canoe
Mens solo canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Half a Perfect Storm (Gaetan Plourde) 47:59:34
2 – Doggy Paddle (Matthew Smith) 59:47:00

Womens solo canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Yukoned Me Into It (Esther Wheeler) 51:31:45
2 – Gulo Gulo (Alison Eremenko) 54:30:47
3 – Chasing the Wolverine (Leslie Davenport) 60:39:50

Solo kayak
Mens solo kayak

1 – Wunnumut (Jeff Brainard) 44:10:35
2 – Golden Retriever (Wayne Anderson) 45:43:00
3 – Estonian Vikings (Mart Reimann) 48:46:32

Womens solo kayak

1 – Victorious Secret (Mirjam Fleming) 53:43:02
2 – Rough Cut Diamond (Patricia Jones) 55:46:34

Tandem canoe
Mens tandem canoe

1 – Soggy Bottom Boys 43:13:36
2 – Spirit of the Yukon 44:36:28
3 – Calgary Canoe Club 45:42:20

Womens tandem canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Love of Paddling 47:43:24
2 – The Girls Next Door 56:51:23

Mixed tandem canoe

1 – The Bickersons 46:18:53
2 – Mennonites Don’t Tip 50:49:31
3 – Fermentation Vessel 53:43:17

Tandem kayak
Mens tandem kayak
NEW RECORD

1 – www.tyreorder.com Elite Team 40:05:43
2 – Yukon Wide Adventures 45:01:00
3 – World of Kayaks Team Estonia M&M 50:20:16

Womens tandem kayak
NEW RECORD

1 – Huum Sauna 43:44:39

Mixed tandem kayak

1 – Schaay Ventures 47:39:15
2 – RBA 62:28:13

Four-person canoe
Mens four-person canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Something Else Entirely 39:08:12 (new overall race record)
2 – Team Quickblade 43:13:04

Womens four-person canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Every Child Matters 50:23:11
2 – Sea Wings 57:22:08

Mixed four-person canoe
NEW RECORD

1 – Delta Heat 43:17:01
2 – VIP Bucket List 46:25:05

Voyageur
Mens voyageur

1 – Pagunpogo 40:05:43
2 – Hatchet Lake 42:35:37
3 – Buckwheat’s Howlers 46:40:05

Mixed voyageur

1 – High Voltage 54:17:00

Women's Voyageur

1 – Stix Together 46:24:14
2 – Team Whoa 54:03:57

Half Quest
NEW RECORD

1 – Eddyline (mens tandem canoe) 24:38:54
2 – Paddlers Abreast (womens voyageur) 25:00:40
3 – Crisis and the Commando (mixed tandem kayak) 26:07:11

This item was submitted by Amy Kenny, the Yukon River Quest’s media director.