Ker sailboats for sale

Buying a used Ker: a design office's name, not a boatyard's

A listing under "Ker" isn't from a Ker-branded boatyard. It's a raceboat designed by Jason Ker's Winchester, UK studio and built under contract by McConaghy Boats -- two separate companies whose roles are worth keeping straight when weighing condition and provenance. The value case here rests on a documented IRC race record rather than brand recognition alone: a Ker 40 has taken class and overall wins at the Rolex Fastnet Race, the RORC Myth of Malham Race, the RORC Caribbean 600, the Middle Sea Race, and the Loro Piana Giraglia Race, and Ker designs more broadly carry IRC results at the China Cup, Rolex Commodores Cup, Cowes Week, and the Fast40 Class. That record is a stronger indicator of what you're buying than the name on the hull.

Which era to target

The catalog holds two Ker designs, and they aren't interchangeable eras of the same boat. The 2010 Ker 40 carries its keel loads into the hull through two beams of machined aerospace-grade alloy, tied into the bulkheads fore and aft and into the mast step, with a cast-iron fin encapsulated in GRP and a rule-legal fairing on the trailing edge -- a spec that predates a later, unrelated design called the Ker 40+, whose hull form "bears little relation" to the original: built lighter, deeper-drafted, and lower-drag, in either prepreg carbon or E-glass. Confirm which generation a used listing actually represents before comparing anything else -- treating a 40+ figure as descriptive of the original 40, or the reverse, will misread the boat. The Ker 33, also built by McConaghy, uses a simpler E-glass and core-cell vinylester resin layup, to ISO 12215 Category A.

Navigating the lineup

Between the two models in the full model directory on this page, the 40 is the line's proven raceboat, with a multi-year IRC results record behind it; the 33 is McConaghy's smaller production pairing with the same design office. Either way, verify which design generation -- and, for the 40, which construction spec -- a given listing actually describes.