They slid into Dawson City after dinner on Friday, a 715-kilometre journey complete.

The banks, lined with supporters on Canada Day cheered on “Perfect Storm” as Jeff Brainard and Gaetan Plourde took their final strokes in the Yukon River.

Excited whispers turned to murmurs, turned to shouts as spotters zeroed in on the tiny specs as they rounded the corner where the Klondike meets the Yukon.

Plourde, of Kanata, Ont., pulled into shore looking like he had just been out for a sightseeing tour, and not the gruelling 46 hours of paddling from Whitehorse to Dawson. His bowman, Brainard, of Roslin, Ont., breathed a little harder than his teammate.

“Feeling happy and tired, probably in that order,” said Plourde as a group of about 50 people crowded the takeout.

The tandem canoe team beat the next boat, solo kayak Dave Hutchison by almost an hour.

“It was a weird race for a couple of hours,” said Plourde. “We got them (another tandem canoe) off our draft then we had to sprint for almost two hours until we got rid of them. Even after an hour of sprinting, they were still 20 metres behind us.”

“So then in the middle of the night we decided to sprint again for half an hour straight just to get more distance from them, then we did it again for another 20 minutes to get more and more distance,” added Brainard.

“And that was probably the toughest paddle I’ve ever done,” said Plourde.

The duo soon traded their gatorade for beer and waited for the next teams to come in.

First was Hutchison, the Montana man who, last year, won the Yukon River Quest with Bob Ross in a tandem kayak.

After pulling into Carmacks, further into the pack, he paddled hard in the last 400 kilometres, fuelled by rock and roll in his tiny red iPod shuffle to finish in 47:17.30.

His family greeted him at the take-out, as volunteers offered him gatorade.

“Sorry dad,” his son said. “I’d give you some of mine, but I drank it all earlier.”

Hutchison would also relax on shore with a meal and wait for the third place boat, tandem kayak “Team Jester,” to arrive.

The Australian duo arrived 40-some minutes later.

They impressed themselves at their first River Quest showing, especially after their boat was accidentally left in Sydney. Organizers pulled a few strings and they were able to start the race in a new boat.

“The first time we sat in that boat was when we went from the start,” said Jeeb Smith. “We’re very happy with coming in like we have, because we didn’t think we would.”

The duo finished the race in high spirits.

“We had a strategy where we stopped thinking about where it was and just kept paddling,” he said. “You know when you’re out there and you feel bad, you’ve got to keep going or you can’t get here.”

Their close bond also kept the team going in hard times.

“I think if anybody whinges too much, the other tells him to shut up and stop whinging. But we’re both fairly optimistic, so we didn’t have any morale problems,” said Smith.

The team was able to support each other wordlessly at times paddling harder when needing that boost.

“If you can tell one person is down, you’ve got to try and liven up a bit, otherwise if you both go down, then it’s not going to end well,” said Derek Chart.