Demoralizing dampness. Wet camp gear. Misery.

Paddlers Jim Boyde and Peter Coates agreed on this description of the conditions for the third-annual Yukon 360 Canoe and Kayak Race over the weekend.

"It was borderline miserable. Soggy,” said Boyde, who had paddled in the Yukon 360 the three years the race has run. "There were times when the sun came out. But there were other times when, packing up, the rain quit, and you were able to get everything back in your boat without the rain pelting on you. There's always respite in amongst the hard times.”

Boyde pointed out that the temperature of the 2010 Yukon 360 from Faro to Pelly Crossing hovered around 30 C.

This year, seven teams – from Ontario, Germany, Florida and the Yukon – assembled in Mayo on a Saturday doused in steady rain.

Almost miraculously, Coates said, the rain ceased at the start line.

But it was no omen.

"People don't really paddle as hard when they're cold, wet and miserable,” Coates said. "It takes time to take clothes on and off. And you have to work harder when you're in more clothes, because you have to bend the clothes as well as your arms. It makes the camping part that much slower because everything is wet, and it's difficult and depressing rather than being a truly wonderful wilderness experience.”

Voyageur team Manitoulin, of Ontario, was unaffected by the conditions, clocking an overall winning time of 41 hours, 39 minutes.

Tandem canoe duo Pam and Jim Boyde, of Team Boyde's of a Feather 2, took second with a time of 42:20. Fellow tandem canoe team Pelicans

Again, consisting of Coates and Monique Levesque, finished third in 42:42.

But the race didn't go so smoothly for organizers tracking the progress of the paddlers.

Florida kayaker Ed Lawlor, who finished fifth with a time of 47:20, experienced a malfunction with his SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger.

On Sunday morning, Lawlor's device switched from track mode, which sends a signal every 10 minutes, into help mode – sending a distress signal every 10 minutes.

Eventually, the RCMP was called.

Lawlor recently left the McQuestern Airstrip, where there is road access to the river. The officers determined Lawler's kayak recently landed and left.

Yukon 360 organizers determined Lawlor, who is an experienced kayaker and outdoorsman, was having problems only with his SPOT device.

"Ed didn't know he was sending help messages,” Coates said. "He was quite horrified when he got into Dawson.”

Since then, Coates was told by the company that this particular problem had never happened before.

"To have it fail going from track mode into help mode is something that they have never encountered before,” Coates said. "So this was a strange one-off failure.”