Only one team remains on the water in the Yukon 1000 race, with 11 having finished in less than eight days after leaving Whitehorse earlier this month.

The two winning teams were both from Britain: Team Hendron and After the Gold Rush, which both finished at six days, two hours and 11 minutes.

Before the race began on July 13, organizers had not expected any team to be able to finish in under seven days.

Team All The Way were the third team to cross the finish line, coming in at six days, six hours and 30 minutes.

The fourth group was Yukon Voyageurs, completing the Yukon 1000 less than half an hour later, Race co-founder Thomas Coates said he wasn't surprised by three tandem kayaks finishing ahead of the Yukon voyageur.

"Looking at some of the pedigree of some of these animals up front, those three kayaks are being paddled by absolute monsters," he said.

The Yukon 1000 will be an annual 1,000 mile (1,600-km) wilderness race.

Paddlers began in Whitehorse and finished in the Dalton Highway Bridge, north of Fairbanks, where the Alaska Pipeline crosses the river.

Seventeen teams began the 2009 race and only two pulled out (one because they were enjoying it so much and didn't want to rush).

The Yukon 1000 used both GPS track data and spot devices. Spot devices enable the teams to send their current location via the satellite phone network to race control where their position is automatically updated on the web page.

One of the race's rules required teams must stop overnight for at least six hours.

The spot checks were a huge success (despite sometimes taking a little longer to send out the signal) and Coates said the race couldn't happen without them.

"Even if the spot data didn't work to provide results for the race, which it absolutely did, either way it prevents people from worrying and it turns it into a spectator sport," he said.

"There are hundreds of people world wide that have been monitoring that web site constantly and seeing where their friends are and knowing they are OK."

Coates said he is confident about the Yukon 1000 becoming an annual tradition.

"We will be doing this next year and the year after and hopefully many, many years to come," he said. "We are all thrilled at how well it turned out."

There is less than two and a half weeks until the Yukon 1000's sister race, the Yukon 360, starts in Johnson's Crossing on Aug. 15.

Coates said there is currently 10 teams signed up, but others have expressed interest.

Entries are still being accepted for the 360 mile long event.

The entry process is also automated, and the forms are available at http://yukon1000.com/360/index.html.