Still only 31, Ker has forged a varied and challenging route to his current success. After leaving school at Sherborne he joined the RAF as a trainee fighter pilot — only to be made almost instantly redundant as the Cold War ended.
Having been a keen dinghy sailor at school, and getting the normal teenage itch to travel Down Under, Ker ended up as the dogsbody Briton in a Sydney boat-building firm.
A degree course in naval architecture at Southampton was intended to fill the two-year wait until Ker could apply to rejoin the RAF. Instead, a passion was ignited. “I stopped thinking about Tornados and Harriers and started daydreaming about racing yachts,” he says.
His first commission came so casually that Ker didn’t even realise it had arrived. “I was racing with a mate called Paul Churchill, and to fill the time waiting for the breeze one day I was telling him about the boat I could design for him,” he says. “He must have agreed, but I didn’t realise he was serious until he asked me for the plans about three months later.”
That boat, Shaker Maker, was a standout success at Cork Week and Ker was on his way.
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Winning from the outset is what owners, crew and designers dream of, but for the sailing and shore team of the new 55ft Aera, it was a reality. Her rapid rise to fame and consistent winning streak make Aera one of the key boats in the 900-strong fleet at Cowes Week this year.
Her track record speaks for itself and includes a win on her first outing. An overall victory at the national championships followed just a week later. Peeved rivals lobbied successfully to have Aera’s International Rule Club (IRC) handicap increased. Yet even with her higher rating, the boat continued her winning ways, scoring seven wins out of nine races in the recent Admiral’s Cup.
One or two critics have suggested that Ker’s greatest skill is driving a coach and horses through a design rule — the IRC — largely intended to rate cruising boats against one another. He is adamant that exploiting loopholes in the system was not at the heart of his latest racer.
“There is no single aspect of Aera’s design that makes this boat competitive,” he says. “Although we are perceived to have designed specifically to the rule, the reality is that the starting point was to make this boat as fast as possible.”
According to Ker, the boat’s hull shape is effective, and the lion’s share of the effort was spent in refining her keel and rudder sections. To achieve this, Ker made extensive use of computer-modelling techniques.
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Ker and his three-strong design team have managed to create a boat that wins without being extreme. It may be a clue to the seeming cul-de-sac that racing yacht design is currently trapped in.
Has celebrity brought work? “We’ve never had as many inquiries as we have at the present,” he says. “The task now is to turn them into boats.”
Matthew Sheahan is technical editor for Yachting World