The first clue Esther Wheeler had that her finish in Dawson City meant a little more than 58th place was the crowd.

They lined the shore and dyke of the Yukon River to cheer the 37-year-old on as she finished the last 100 metres of her historic 715-kilometre race.

About 30 minutes before noon on Saturday, after 61 hours, 33 minutes and nine seconds on the water, Wheeler became the first woman to finish the Yukon River Quest in a solo canoe.

“You know you’re the first going into it and once you get to Carmacks and you’re fine, you know you’re going to finish unless something bad happens,” Wheeler said shortly after she’d pulled ashore past the finish. “Then you don’t think about it until there’s more people on the shore than you’ve ever seen and they all know who you are and then you’re like man, people care.”

Wheeler, of Harrogate, United Kingdom, had tackled the Yukon River Quest before. Her first race was in 2013, when she paddled it in a tandem canoe. She also raced last year in a voyageur.

“I always wanted to do it solo,” she said, eyes bright. “I just did it the other times so I could warm up and learn the river.”

Wheeler only began paddling eight years ago in the United Kingdom.

She said it was a way for her to get over her fear of water – she panicked when she got stuck under a raft in Nepal – and also to begin preparing for the River Quest. After all, it helps to know how to paddle in order to compete in the world’s longest annual paddling race.

Wheeler got off to a rocky start this year, sitting on her paddle as she launched the boat from Rotary Peace Park in Whitehorse. She admits the start is never her strong point.

Starting in the top quarter pack, she dropped positions as other boats passed, but kept a steady pace across Lake Laberge. The conditions were perfect for Wheeler, not too hot and calm.

“I paddled way harder than I should have,” she said.

But after the lake, she was able to navigate the Thirtymile section with another solo canoeist and a standup paddlerboarder; they were the first people she’d been able to speak to since the race started.

She was blessed with sleep at Carmacks and continued down the river, with a bit of uncertainty at Five Fingers Rapid.

Paddling with Robert Lafontaine, another C-1, Wheeler said she was determined to have a clean run through the rapids. She took the first finger with speed and sailed straight across the second toward a towering mid-stream island.

Not wanting to hit her boat, Wheeler eddied out, but slipped out the bottom of the slow water back into the current.

She ran the rest of the rapids pointed upstream.

“It turns out I’m the first first person to go through Five Fingers backwards,” she said. “Robert is the second to go through Five Fingers backwards.

“I didn’t even get the deck of the boat wet. That’s the smoothest Five Finger ride I’ve ever had.”

Wheeler’s women’s solo canoe record now stands at 61:33:09.

She thinks it could easily be beat by at least five hours.

While she knows what she would do differently, Wheeler said that she thinks she’ll leave the record breaking to other women for the time being; she wants to tackle the race in a C-4 next and still wants to kayak.

Wheeler didn’t think it would be a woman from the U.K. who finished the race first. She thought it would be a Canadian, but recognizes that solo boats aren’t as common as more people tend to use tandem canoes for tripping and camping.

“I think it’s an availability thing. Less women enter anyway in the solo classes and the canoes are slower, there’s no doubt about that, and if you’re – I mean we’re being general – but women tend to be slower than men,” she said. “And then you put yourself in a slow boat, you’re setting yourself up for a world of pain unless you’re really prepared to train and fight as hard as you can.”

With work taking her to Australia, Wheeler is thankful for the paddling community and is already planning her next River Quest.

“I think it’s one of the more amazing sports that I’ve done that has a community around it,” she said. “It’s unlike anything else.”