Connection to rsyncd over ssh tunnel seems to choke up (v2.6.9 Ubuntu)

[Frank Hamersley]

I have been running the following (from a cron script with a non password
authorized_key exchange) ...

rsync -aP -vv --exclude=".*/" -e 'ssh -fN user at site.com.au -L
8873:127.0.0.1:873' rsync://localhost:8873/data/ /data/

... and not getting much to happen as either evidenced in
/var/log/rsyncd.log or as artefacts on the local file system.

Then I started to execute the command(s) in a shell window and finally got
some action by

  (1) leaving a previous ssh tunnel process (from a "failed" attempt)
running and
  (2) then simply punching out the rsync command less the -e part?!?

It seems (to my untrained eye) that there is a race condition between
setting up the ssh tunnel and rsync client trying to tap rsyncd on tcp/873.

Is this a credible possibility or alternatively have I missed something
fundamental from the rsync command?

Cheers, Frank.