The nicest bathrooms on Lake Murray? Renovated Chapin marina also has a store.
When Brandon Crutchfield looked around his boyhood marina, he didn’t love what he saw.
“They had everything from raw sewage running into the lake to people living in campers with kids without electricity,” Crutchfield said. “It had gotten really bad.”
In 2020, Crutchfield and his childhood friend and business partner Matt Mungo, a third-generation Midlands homebuilding executive in charge of Haven Homes, purchased the Putnam’s Harbor site in Chapin.
They spent the next four years upgrading and restoring it in hopes of creating a competitive, up-to-date full-service marina that could see renewed and sustained success.
“We decided to buy it and make it as nice as we possibly could,” Crutchfield said. “It’s our backyard, so it’s very important to us.”
Since its grand reopening in April 2024, Crutchfield said the 360-spot facility has already reached nearly 75% capacity. In addition to boat storage, the site offers gasoline, premium and diesel fueling, utilities, cleaning services, visiting food trucks and plan to offer pontoon boat rentals in the future.
The marina offers dry stack storage for an annual rate of $4,800, with monthly payments of $400 also available. Wet Slip storage is also priced at $4,800 per year, or $450 per month. A service fee applies to monthly payments, along with a $16 per foot surcharge after 25 feet up to 34 feet.
Crutchfield said the marina’s store, which includes items such as sunscreen, ice, food and beverage and marine goods along with clean, modern bathrooms is a particular point of pride.
“We put in the nicest marina store on the lake,” he said. “We have bathrooms that are floor to ceiling marble because we know that matters to people coming off the lake. They want to go a clean bathroom.”
Putnam’s Harbor also has an app where patrons can electronically request their boat to be taken out of dry storage and put on the water while on the way to the marina. Customers can also request services like ice, drinks and fueling through the app.
Crutchfield, whose business background is in private yachting, said he strives to bring over as much as that experience as possible to Putnam’s Harbor.
“Every single boat that’s in the dry stack before you get there is rinsed and washed at every single use,” he said. “I worked for a lot of guys that demanded the highest level of service, and my guys at Putnam, they’re capable of delivering a higher level of service then we were.”
In 2024, the South Carolina Department of Transportation reported 325,937 registered boats in the state, with 39,315 in Lexington and Richland counties alone.
Putnam’s Harbor is one of 10 marinas operating on the shores of Lake Murray, where local tourism officials are preparing for several America250 events this summer. Crutchfield said having various accessible marinas around the lake has been key to its popularity.
“Lake Murray has a bunch of great marinas,” he said. “It’s nice to see them proportionately located in great spots around the lake.”