If you wondered how Harold Cudmore went to Saint-Tropez with the Royal Cork YC’s in-house Cork Harbour OD Jap last Autumn and duly came home with the glitziest classics prize, then the first two days of Volvo Cork Week 2022 have been providing an eloquent answer.

The Boy Harold and Jap have hit form again and notched two clear victories, while for good measure they’ve been coming home both times ahead on the water of a goodly selection of relative newbies from the likes of Dick Carter in his prime in the late 1960s.

Harold Cudmore helming Jap, the vintage Cork Harbour One Design Photo Rick Tomlinson

Of interest is the fact that Jap was not noted as a star in the class’s early days pre-World War I. But since then, she has been the only CHOD to get the complete Fairlie Restorations treatment from Duncan Walker and his team in order to optimize her for classics racing with Clayton Love Jnr, mainly on the Mediterranean circuit.

CHOD Jap (on left) racing in the Classics Division of Cork Week Photo: Rick Tomlinson

This has resulted in a boat which classics sailmaker and racing ace Andy Cassells has described as one of the most pleasant and rewarding yachts you could hope to helm. And even dead downwind, when the more modern craft are involved in the highly verbal hassle of setting mighty masthead spinnakers, Jap is already well on her way to the lee mark despite her relatively stumpy mast, having quietly swung out a mainsail which is the size of one very large barn door.