Five Lowcountry sailors are headed to Greece where they will face the world’s best. What are their chances?

Thrice a week and in the darkness, Arabella Duer, age 16, is already in the gym hours before another glorious Lowcountry sunrise crests above the coastal waters around her Beaufort.

Before even the earliest rising Bay Street shop owners open their doors, she is sweating out another grueling, heart-pounding CrossFit training session to gain that precious edge.

That precious edge might just lead her to be the best in the world at something special.

It is all part of a routine designed to give her a chance to become the world’s top sailing racer of Laser dinghies. Ironically with their modest size, this global fleet of boats comprise one of the most competitive classes of sailboats in the world. The laser is boasts a simple, small boat construction and all competitors play by the same rules: one sailor, one design. No mechanical advantage to any competitor. It’s only skill, tactics, strength, stamina, focus and grit.

If you want to win with technology, find another class to race.

This is NASCAR on choppy water and brisk winds.

And with all sailing, like road racing, there is always a little luck involved — from the occasional puff of a helping breeze at the right moment.

Epicenter for racing training

Duer has been sailing since she was 10. She lives in Beaufort but her sailing base is the South Carolina Yacht Club at Windmill Harbour on Hilton Head Island, a gated waterfront community. Her training grounds are the warm but choppy and unforgiving waters of Calibogue Sound and the Intercoastal Waterway.

One day, Bella, as her friends and family know her, hopes to compete at the highest level of the sport — the Olympics.

“I really enjoy the freedom I get going out there and being able to sail,” say Bella. “I really love it, the competition side.”

Bella is not alone in representing the Lowcountry in Greece. She is one of five junior sailors who train at the South Carolina Yacht Club who qualified to compete in the International Laser Class Association 4 Youth World Championship in Greece where they will be pushed physically and mentally against the world’s best.

Along with Duer are Bode Snider of Bluffton, Will Bryant of Atlanta and twins Nathan and James Pine of Charleston.

“That’s a big deal,” says Bella’s father, Chris Duer, speaking about the number of local junior sailors who will be competing in Greece. “Not a whole lot of clubs can say they’re sending even two or three to a world championship.”

In recent years, the SCYC has gained a reputation as a proving ground for junior racing in the mid-Atlantic region and a top place for junior sailors to train between south Florida and New England.

In Greece, the ILCA 4 Youth World Championship are held July 22 through July 30 and will feature competitors from six continents and more than 50 nations.

The 4.7 Lasers used in the competition are named for their 4.7 square meters of sail area — pushing the 130-pound, 13-foot hulls through rough water and crosswind conditions. These stalwart crafts have been a fixture on the bays and rivers of the east coast for decades where young sailors have learned how to pilot a shorter-masted vessel to reach speeds of 15 knots downwind on a puff and a prayer. There are moments when grips on tillers are lost and rudders are flying and keels near breaching the water’s surface — but the good sailors recover from near calamity and fight to the finish.

“It’s sailor against sailor,” Chris Duer says.

Locals from the Lowcountry enjoy seeing the crafts dotting the horizon as the mainsails ride the breezes. The sleek boats can be seen from the shores of Hilton Head, South Beach, while crossing the J. Wilton Graves Bridge or Daufuskie Island.

The sailors perch on the aft gunwale of their crafts and lean back over the water, coaxing the maximum speed and staving off costly crests that may wash over the bow and push them back in the pack. Only toes and thighs remain attached to the boat. With one gloved hand, they grip a tiller to guide the rudder to maneuver the tiny craft as breezes flit the craft across the ocean. All the while, the remaining hand is lashed to a salty line, easing and sharpening the sail against the breeze. They do all this while salt water and wind slaps their faces and they calculate their next move to take an advantage on the field.

Chris Duer compares it to “getting drilled by a fire hose.” “It’s the toughest sport with no timeouts,” adds Mark Newman, who heads the SCYC sailing program at Windmill Harbour.

Competitors battle each other and battering waves during the mile-long races that last 45 minutes to an hour. Sometimes, temperatures reach 100 degrees.

Waters off Hilton Head are great training grounds, Newman says, providing most of the conditions the young sailors will encounter at the international competitions, including large waves, strong currents and wind.

“We can offer all of that by just changing our locations,” Newman says.

The South Carolina racers won’t be happy just to be in Greece. They’re hoping to bring home some trophies, Newman says.

Nathan and James Pine are the top 4.7 sailors in the country.

Last year, James Pine was second, out of 496 boats, at the 2022 Optimist World Championship in Turkey, losing by 1 point. Optimists are the smallest class of single-handed dinghies. In 2022, he won the 4.7 Lasers Orange Bowl International Youth Regatta in Miami.

His brother, Nathan, finished 5th in the European Omptist championship last year.

Last year, Bella finished fifth among Americans at the ILCA 4 Youth World Championship.

“For us it’s huge, it’s setting the bar higher,” Newman says of the local sailors who are competing internationally. “We have a large group of kids who were all pushed into sailing because of covid because there was nothing else to do.”

Newman calls the Pines of Charleston his “covid converts” after they chose to switch their training to the Hilton Head Club during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Colton Ford, 12, of Hilton Head, just got back from the 2023 North American Optimist Championships (OptiNams) in Antigua and Barbuda, an island country in the West Indies.

And Lachlan Duer, also 12, of Beaufort, Bella’s younger brother, is currently is training and competing in the Open Skiff World Championship in Italy, where he’s getting advice from New Zealand yachtsman Russell Coutts of America’s Cup renown. Getting advice from Coutts is akin to young football players getting coached by quarterback Tom Brady, the NFL great, Chris Duer says.

J.R. Richardson, the developer of Windmill Harbour, learned to sail with Charles Fraser, Hilton Head Island’s visionary developer of Sea Pines Plantation, when he was a young man.

He started the sailing program in 1989 and it’s trained several thousand kids since. A fund is set aside to help those with training and travel expenses.

Richardson sees the growing number of junior sailors at SCYC at Windmill Harbour who are competing at the highest levels as marvelous accomplishment for a small community. “I’m proud of the program,” Richardson says.

Secret to success

Richard credits Newman, who was hired in 2014, for raising the level of training.

“I think we just do it better,” Newman says simply.

Newman was a high school teacher and working as a yachting director during the summers in Newport News, Virginia when he posted his resume with U.S. Sailing, the national governing body for the sport. He and his wife and their six-month old baby drove to South Carolina for an interview just after Labor Day in 2014. He was hired a month later and has been here ever since.

The secret to producing and attracting great sailors is having a large number of kids who are the same age training in one venue in team conditions, which makes everybody better, Newman says. In that regard, the sport is no different than any other. Today, kids come from as far away as Annapolis in Maryland and as far south as St. Augustine.

“We are reaching out a little farther every year,” Newman says.

Newman credits the support from the Yacht Club membership for the program’s success.

At the world championship, there will be two races a day for six days.

“It’s just how far you can push yourself in those two races,” Beaufort’s Bella Duer says. “It’s definitely hard. “

But it’s a thinking game, too.

The sport is often compared to chess because it requires a knack for anticipating future situations before they happen. “You have to work the boat to get there before your competition,” Bella says.

For Bella, the Laser 4.7 is a potential pathway to the Olympics.

“That is definitely the end goal,” Bella says.

Chris Duer and his wife, Tauri, both sailed at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

“They just kind of passed it along to me,” says Bella, who is home-schooled.

But Chris Duer says he never competed at the level of his daughter. He used to own a Yacht manufacturing business. Now he works in sales and marketing for a large U.S. company in the composite industry. The Duers once lived in Virginia but years ago they decided to change locations and hopped in a car and drove south. When they discovered Beaufort, they stopped driving. Stunning conditions, they thought. Sailing all year round. in 2007, they moved to Beaufort.

“There’s no snow to worry about when you go sailing,” Bella says with a laugh.