The 2025 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race will go down in history with its winner on corrected time, Min River, breaking two records on the way to her ultimate triumph.

Min River is the first double-handed yacht to win the prestigious Tattersall Cup, which is awarded to the overall race winner, and is also the first winning entry to be skippered by a woman, with Chinese-Australian owner Jiang Lin at the helm.

Lin, the 2024-25 Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) Female Ocean Racer of the Year, co-skippered Min River with Frenchman Alexis Loison.

“I can’t believe it. It’s wonderful. I hope it will encourage more women to try. You never know what can happen,” said Lin, who has lived in Sydney since October 2023 and named her boat after the river in China that flows through Fujian province, where her parents lived.

“I never dreamed of winning it (on corrected time), but my ambition was that if we could win the (double-handed) division, that would be nice. That was my goal,” she told reporters.

Jiang Lin co-skippered with Frenchman Alexis Loison. (Cruising Yacht Club of Australia)

However, behind the excitement, there was a lament that the outcome was ultimately decided on land, following a protest.

No one felt the disappointment more than Michel Quintin and Yann Rigal aboard the New Caledonian boat BNC-myNet/Léon, earlier the ‘winner in waiting’ after being the first double-handed finisher whose hopes were undone by the protest.

The protest against BNC was for a breach of Racing Rule of Sailing 55.3, relating to sail sheeting. It was initially lodged with the race committee by the Min River team on Tuesday. But then they withdrew the protest on Wednesday before it was due to be heard by an International Jury at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania at 9 a.m. (AEDT).

By that time, Quintin and Rigal had seen images of the breach overnight, realized their error and admitted it to the race committee, maintaining the breach was unintentional and that they were unaware of the specific rule.

The breach occurred on the River Derwent with less than two nautical miles remaining in the 628-nautical-mile race — agonizingly close.

Their admission obligated race committee chair Lee Goddard to lodge a protest on behalf of the committee against BNC. The protest was heard at 9:30 a.m. (AEDT) and upheld.

After the one-hour hearing, the international jury imposed a discretionary penalty of one hour and five minutes onto BNC’s elapsed time.

With the penalty, BNC still held first place in the double-handed line honours division. But on corrected time, the time penalty relegated them from first overall to second, and elevated Min River, previously 54 minutes behind BNC on corrected time, from second to first place.