The line honours outcome of the Sydney-Hobart race was decided at midday yesterday in favour of George Snow's 75ft Brindabella, but only after a cliffhanger of a duel in the last 11 miles up the River Derwent from the Iron Pot Lighthouse. It was a traditional finish to the 630-miler in a shaky, vestigial sea breeze with Brindabella pressed hard by Warwick Miller's 66ft Exile.

Brindabella led by a mile and a half when she passed the Iron Pot under a light spinnaker and continued into the middle of the Derwent in five to six knots of breeze. Just after Exile passed the Lighthouse, Brindabella lost that breeze and was becalmed in a foul ebb tide.

Graeme Freeman, the experienced local tactician of the Chinese boat, called for Miller to hug the eastern shore. "There is no current here," he said.

Exile gained until she was level with the stricken Brindabella a mile to leeward of her. Brindabella changed from spinnaker to a ghosting headsail, and at that point Exile, too, lost the breeze.

Moments later, Brindabella picked up the first of a new wind, re-set her spinnaker and was off before the breeze reached Exile. Only nine and half minutes separated them when they crossed the finish line off Battery Point and Exile then looked poised to take the handicap honours.

That was before Syd Ficher's 50ft Ragamuffin, steered by Andy Beadsworth, and Karl Kwock's 49ft Beau Geste finished eight hours later with just six seconds separating them. Their final miles were a matched race between old protagonist at that discipline, Beadsworth, and Gavin Brady at the wheel of Beau Geste.

The handicap honours were then with the Chinese boat, Beau Geste, but there were some smaller boats still in contention which had yet to finish, notably last year's winner George Gjewrgra's 47ft Ausmaid and Roger Hickman's 40ft Atara.