Extraordinary Boats: JV43 Red 2 – A full-throated racer

The JV43 Red 2 is a racing and fast cruising machine designed for a couple with a thirst for adventure and a taste for the barefoot sailing life

Compared with the multihulls and centre cockpit cruising yachts dwarfing them in Las Palmas, Mathias and Katharina Müller von Blumencron’s yacht Red 2 really is extraordinary. The JV43 is compact by comparison and shorn of the many luxuries cruising boats customarily freight. It is clearly a full-throated racer, yet the couple have been cruising around the Med for months. “A boat that isn’t quite sure what it is?” puzzled one observer.

Not at all. Red 2 is absolutely certain of purpose. It is a cruiser-racer that harks back to simpler, less complicated times yet is supercharged by the latest design concepts and technical innovations. The full, blunt-nosed bow, flared topsides, pronounced reverse sheer and large cockpit cuddy are clear statements that this is designed as a powerful short-handed offshore racer. It resembles a Class 40, but with a twist.

The JV43 was born out of just this concept and style of sailing. The Class 40 box rule was devised in 2004 to provide a scaled down, more accessible alternative to the Open 50 or IMOCA 60 for short-handed offshore racing. The first example was launched in 2005, and one of the early entrants to this new pro-am circuit was Mathias Müller von Blumencron, a German-Swiss journalist, then editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine. In 2011 he bought a Simon Rogers design, named Red (a journalist’s pun!).

Over the next decade and a half, Müller von Blumencron competed in four Rolex Fastnet Races, won his class in the RORC Transatlantic Race and competed in many other big offshore events such as the Sables-Horta race, Quebec-St Malo race, the Caribbean 600 and several Normandy Channel races. He also cruised in the boat when not racing.

As the years went by, his Class 40 became steadily outclassed by evolving design standards. If set side by side, the wide-bodied, scow-bowed designs of today would look radically different to the Red of 14 years ago, and the new versions are startlingly quick by comparison. It was also, as he noted: “an empty boat”.

Enthusiastic as ever about racing, Müller von Blumencron wanted to capitalise on the available extra power, while also planning for extended cruising. He was not alone in wanting something new: his friend Wolf Scheder-Bieschin, a highly experienced racer who grew up campaigning for the Admiral’s Cup on his father’s yacht Vineta, was also keen on a semi-custom design.

A new concept

During the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 the two friends had plenty of time to think about the concept. They made a sketch and went to designers Judel/Vrolijk to ask: “Is it feasible? Could we find a compromise with a modern shaped hull and more comforts?”

Designer Antoine Cardin appreciated what they were after and looked at an extended, roomier version of the Class 40 concept. Over nine months he developed the hull shape with them, evaluating 15 comparison models with surprising results. “The fuller we made the bow shape, the faster it was – and not by a little, by one or two knots,” says Müller von Blumencron, “and so we ended up with a scow bow.”

He and Wolf Scheder-Bieschin looked at yards that could build the pair of JV43s and chose Ocean Tec in Slovenia. “They made a good bid and had built some Class 40s and the HH42 Oystercatcher 30,” he says.

Since he’d always liked the deck layout of the original Red for short-handed sailing a similar arrangement was adopted, but with more space and a larger protected cuddy. There are two companionways into the cabin, separated by a central pit console, and all lines and halyards are run back to five winches, which can be operated in the protection of the cockpit.

The Axxon carbon mast is 1m higher than that of the first Red, and the sails proportionately bigger. To fill performance gaps at all angles of sail, Red 2 has an inventory comprising a genoa on soft hanks, a Code 0 (a runner) set from the bowsprit, a staysail on a furler and two spinnakers, a fractional and an A2, both in socks and set at the bowsprit – technically both gennakers. There is also a jib top, or high clew reacher that is the go-to headsail when reaching in stronger winds.

The headstay is carbon but the rest of the standing rigging is conventional stainless rod – “a good compromise which saves weight,” he says.

There are twin rudders, a deep 3m steel fin keel with lead bulb. The boat is water ballasted with up to 750kg of water, trimmable with three tanks on each side.

All the necessities

Inside, Red 2 is set up for comfortable but plain living to avoid unnecessary weight. The saloon table and nav area is designed around the engine box (uninsulated to save weight). There are foldable seating and sleeping bunks outboard on each side and pipe cots aft, under the cockpit coamings. There are no sole boards, inner shell or bilge, but softer flooring underfoot in the form of EVA foam.

Forward and to starboard there is a galley with a gimballed gas burner/bottle, an Ikea single-ring induction hob and a removable cool box. The owner’s double cabin and en suite heads are in the large forward compartment. The doors between the cabins are made of zipped mesh fabric and the cabins have some details in wood veneer. Remote controlled hidden LED lighting creates a cozy atmosphere at night.

There is no pressurised water system, no shower, no hot water. A 60lt flexible tank provides fresh water to the galley and heads sinks, operated by foot pump. For longer passage-making the total tankage is supplemented by bottled water reserves. For the ARC the crew took 220lt of bottled water.

Fuel capacity is 50lt, which allows for two hours of battery charging a day (the autopilot and Starlink are both quite power hungry) or flat water motoring at around 5.5-6 knots. Red 2 also has solar panels, which can keep the lithium batteries topped up when hand steering.

Equipping the interior for cruising added around 250kg but the all-up weight is nonetheless a comparatively featherweight 5.3 tonnes.

As the Class 40 has evolved to a more powerful, refined design, prices have soared from the ‘affordable’ costs of the early 2000s. Red 2’s price tag puts it in a special category, too: Mathias Müller von Blumencron puts it at around ‘€700,000 net’.

Clocking the miles

Since the boat was launched in late 2023, he has cruised and raced over 10,000 miles and done the Aegean 600, the Palermo-Monte Carlo race (mostly upwind) and most recently the ARC rally and the RORC Caribbean 600. Last May he and Katharina took time off work to cruise through the Greek islands, Sicily, the Côte d’Azur, Balearic Islands, southern Spain, and Morocco, going home for 10 days every two or three months.

Since crossing the Atlantic and arriving in the Caribbean they have spent January and much of February island-hopping.

This is unabashedly a sailors’s boat, perfect for an owner who loves racing a boat like a dinghy and a couple who prefer life afloat to be freer and less complex than on shore.

“We feel we have this wonderful compromise between sailing fast and living well on board,” he says. “We have speed, space and simplicity – the simplicity is very important. We don’t want to be mechanics all the time and we don’t need to duplicate what we have at home. For our taste, we have found a real sweet spot. We said let’s build the fastest cruiser-racer we can imagine in 2023, and then enjoy sailing it, and we have.”]

Red 2 Specifications

LOA: 13.10m / 42ft 11in
Beam: 4.50m / 14ft 8in
Draught: 3.00m / 9ft 7in
Displacement: 5,300kg / 11,684lb
Ballast: 2,100kg / 4,630lb
Water ballast: 750lt / 165gal
Mast height: 18.90m / 62ft 0in
Upwind sail area: 124m2 / 1,335ft2
Downwind sail area: 277m2 / 2,982ft2

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