Olivier de Kersauson and crew attempting the Honolulu to Yokohama speed record aboard the 110ft trimaran Geronimo are suffering in a band of light winds stretching 700 miles.

After more than 12 days at sea, the Capgemini and Schneider Electric trimaran is pressing on with her difficult passage to Yokohama, having covered 4,700 nautical miles since beginning her record attempt in San Francisco.

Geronimo’s progress has been a rather complicated affair for the last four days. De Kersauson commented: “We’re tacking in between 1 and 4 knots of wind in a pretty calm sea and asking ourselves what it would take to find some more wind; but we’ve had to submit – tactics are just impossible.

“We can’t get around this system. The calms stretch 700 miles to the south and to the north the currents are very strong. In this part of the North Pacific, the weather is a bit unstable. There are a lot of small depressions and anticyclones, and some anticyclones can turn into depressions. It’s an unbelievable hotchpotch that’s caused by the immensity of the Asian continent.”

The 11-man crew aboard Geronimo still have 1,000 nautical miles to cover before they reach Yokohama. De Kersauson concluded: “It could be 700 miles of flat calm, followed by 500 miles of beating against a 9 to 12 knot wind on our nose. And if the simulation is right, 45 knots in the last few hours along the coast, with a risk of thick fog: we daren’t allow ourselves to believe it!”