Jason Ker - the Shosholoza designer with impact

by Team Shosholoza Media on 4 May 2007 After three and a half years on the America’s Cup class circuit Team Shosholoza remains the darling of the international media but the name increasingly being bandied about by many in specialist sailing publications is Jason Ker, principal designer of the team’s campaign yacht Shosholoza RSA 83.

It is no surprise then that Ker, who with most of the Shosholoza design team are designing for the America’s Cup for the first time, has been nominated for the prestigious Seahorse Magazine’s Sailor of the Month accolade.

'Take a good young IRC designer and put him in charge of a small America’s Cup Class design team with an even smaller budget. Offer him two new boats and then switch to a single boat campaign, meaning radical modifications to Boat 1 to stay competitive against teams with 20-times your design budget. Well the new kid's doing pretty well and tacticians in the top teams are taking care to treat Shosholoza with respect,' says the nomination.

As principal designer for the South African America's Cup Challenge, Ker assembled and headed up a team of South African and international experts most of whom were based in South Africa for the first phase of the design process which started in September 2004. This was soon after the team returned from the opening Acts of the 32nd America's Cup in Marseille, France and Valencia, Spain in 2004.

RSA 83 was launched seven months earlier than the next new boat dsigned and built to the Version 5 rules for the 32nd America's Cup. It was intended as early first boat to give the South African sailors a better chance to compete in 2005 and also to give the design team a good starting point from which to develop further.

The hull of Shosholoza RSA 83 was built in a team shed in Somerset West (about 20 minutes from Cape Town) and revealed to the South African public on 22 April 2005 in Cape Town. (In terms of the 2007 America's Cup rules the hull of the campaign yacht must be built in the team's home country.)

In 2004 the hull was shipped to Valencia where the keel and first mast were fitted. The yacht was officially launched in Valencia on 19 May 2005.

South Africa chose not to build a second new campaign yacht because the excellent performance of RSA 83 led the team to decide that the teams very tight funds were best spent elsewhere. However fairly substantial modifications were made to RSA 83 over the 2006/7 European winter to eke out more speed from the boat and to ensure the South African's campaign yacht would remain competitive for the Louis Vuitton Cup which it certainly has done.

Ker describes the changes to RSA 83 as follows: 'The bow has been made much finer, so it goes through waves rather than over them. We have added a bowsprit which is designed to enable the spinnaker to be attached as far forward as the rules allow, which would otherwise have not been possible as we've made the bow shorter. The keel fin has had some minor adjustments. There is a new rudder, new bulb, loads of new sail designs and the mast was new near the end of 2006.

'In each case we found a performance gain that was worth the little money we could find to spend on it. For us that's a very important criteria. We can't afford to chase after every tiny improvement we can think of so we focus on only the best value ones - which are also not necessarily the cheapest.

The boat is certainly faster. The maneouvability is also substantially improved so it has been easier to get good starts. We were initially looking for behaviour changes when we did the modifications. We wanted the boat to be easier to sail but we wanted to get more speed if we could find it . We did not do any further tank tests, because we did not have time between coming up with the designs and starting to build, though having already tested 10 models in the Test Tank in Bulgaria, we were confident that we could rely on our computer predictions to tell us we were going in the right direction.

In all Ker believes the newly modified RSA 83 is clearly faster than she was before. Racing in Louis Vuitton Act 13 confirmed this and it is a factor consolidated by the team’s performance in the Louis Vuitton Cup so far.

When asked if he would do an America’s Cup campaign again Ker’s reply was hardly surprising: ' I would certainly want to do it again, yes I'm addicted to it.'

Ker was delighted to learn of his nomination today and stated, 'Our design team is a small group of highly intelligent and effective individuals who have worked very well toggether as a team, improving sails, appendages, rig, hull and structures and I hope this month's nomination by Seahorse will be seen as recognition of their combined efforts'.

Meanwhile thunder and lightning prevented racing at the Louis Vuitton Cup today. Flight 5 of Round Robin Two was postponed and a double flight will be scheduled for tomorrow (Friday) with Flight 5 followed by Flight 6

Team Shosholoza is lying 7th after four flights of match races. The South Africans will race China Team and Emirates Team New Zealand tomorrow.

America's BMW ORACLE Racing and Italy's Luna Rossa are tied at the top of the ranking so far with 27 points each. Emirates Team New Zealand is third on 24 points