Horry and Georgetown County boaters lose their two nearest marine supply stores. The reasons have less to do with local demand than with a debt load assembled a thousand miles from here.
For anyone who keeps a boat at Little River, launches at Wacca Wache, or runs the Waterway out of Cherry Grove, the routine was simple enough: a blown fuse, a chewed-up impeller, or a snapped bimini fitting meant a short drive to Highway 17. That option is gone.
Both West Marine stores serving the Grand Strand — the North Myrtle Beach location at 1288 Highway 17 N and the Murrells Inlet store at 12078 Highway 17 Bypass — appear on the store-closing lists the company filed with the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware [TheStreet, 2026; Post and Courier, 2026]. The closures are part of a corporate restructuring that has now led to the West Marine Stores To Close, which has shuttered more than half of the largest boating retailer in the United States.
The story that gets told about closures like this is usually a story about us: people stopped buying, the market softened, the town changed. The court record tells a different story, and Grand Strand residents deserve the accurate one.
What the filings actually say
West Marine, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection on May 17, 2026, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, with the backing of nearly all of its lenders under a pre-arranged restructuring agreement [TheStreet, 2026; Verita Global, 2026]. The company was explicit that this was a reorganization, not a liquidation — roughly 200 stores across 34 states and Puerto Rico were to remain open while it worked through the process [The Tech Marketer, 2026].
That number did not hold. An initial closing list covered 59 stores in 23 states, including four in South Carolina: Anderson, Port Royal, Murrells Inlet and North Myrtle Beach [Post and Courier, 2026]. A second round in July added 32 more locations, bringing the total to 91 and adding the Columbia store on Harbison Boulevard to South Carolina’s tally [TheStreet, 2026]. A fourth round of closing notices filed July 30 pushed the confirmed total to 101 — more than half the footprint the company described at the time of filing [Shop Eat Surf Outdoor, 2026].
For the Grand Strand, the practical arithmetic is stark. With Murrells Inlet, North Myrtle Beach and Columbia closing, West Marine’s remaining South Carolina presence sits in Charleston, North Charleston, Mount Pleasant and Hilton Head [Post and Courier, 2026]. The nearest surviving store for a Horry County boater is not in South Carolina at all — it is the Wilmington, North Carolina location on Military Cutoff Road, still listed among the company’s operating stores [West Marine, 2026]. Everything else is a two-hour drive down the coast.
That matters more here than it would in most markets. Which brings up the question of why these two stores, in one of the most boat-dense stretches of coastline in the Southeast, ended up on the list at all.
Understanding Why West Marine Stores To Close
The problem was the balance sheet, not the boat ramp
West Marine did not fail on the Grand Strand because Horry County stopped boating. It failed nationally under a debt structure that two prior rescue attempts could not fix.
The company came out of the pandemic boating boom carrying too much debt, too many stores, and inventory bought for a spending environment that had already evaporated. Two out-of-court restructurings in 2023 converted roughly $660 million in debt to equity and added hundreds of millions in fresh capital. Neither was enough [Shop Eat Surf Outdoor, 2026].
Leases were the immediate pressure point. Court filings put West Marine’s roughly 200 leases at about million a year in rent, and CEO Paulee Day told the court the company had been weighed down by underperforming stores it could not shed outside of Chapter 11 because those lease commitments ran too long [Business Observer, 2026]. That is the key sentence for anyone trying to read the Murrells Inlet closure as a referendum on local demand. Chapter 11 is, among other things, a lease-rejection machine. It lets a company walk away from contracts it signed in better years. A store does not have to be unprofitable to be worth closing — it only has to be worth less than the rent.
Coastal tourist markets are especially vulnerable to that math. Highway 17 retail rent runs on annual leases; Grand Strand marine retail runs on a season. A store that does eight months of business in four and pays twelve months of rent is exactly the kind of location a restructuring targets first.
The company also cited tariffs, elevated inventory from distribution-center inefficiencies, and weather that shortened the 2024 and 2025 boating seasons [SGB Media, 2026]. The industry backdrop was genuinely soft — the National Marine Manufacturers Association reported new boat retail unit sales fell 8.8 percent in 2025, to 215,237 units [NMMA, cited in TheStreet, 2026]. But softness in boat sales is a headwind, not a cause of death. Plenty of marine retailers absorbed the same headwind without $500 million in liabilities.
Who took the loss
The reorganization plan that Chief Judge Karen B. Owens confirmed on August 11, 2026, sorts the damage in a way worth understanding, because the pattern repeats across nearly every retail bankruptcy that touches this county [Powerboat News, 2026; Shop Eat Surf Outdoor, 2026].
Term loan lenders holding roughly $251.2 million convert that debt into 100 percent ownership of the reorganized company. Asset-based lenders owed $118.9 million and FILO lenders owed $59.2 million are made whole. Existing equity holders are canceled entirely [Shop Eat Surf Outdoor, 2026]. The lenders who were positioned closest to the collateral emerged owning the business.
Trade vendors sat further down the line. The June monthly operating report listed prepetition unsecured debt at roughly $110.5 million, with Garmin International alone owed about $8.57 million [Powerboat News, 2026; SGB Media, 2026]. Early versions of the plan offered that group little to nothing, a structure that drew a fight from the unsecured creditors’ committee before being resolved through a settlement and a creditor trust at confirmation [Powerboat News, 2026].
At the mandatory creditors’ meeting in June, the U.S. Trustee raised questions about executive compensation paid shortly before the filing, including a retention bonus to the sitting CEO issued sixteen days before the petition date [The Tech Marketer, 2026, citing Trade Only Today]. Those payments were disclosed and are not unusual in Chapter 11. Whether they are defensible is a separate question, and one the vendors now facing partial recoveries are entitled to ask.
None of that money came out of Murrells Inlet. But the Grand Strand paid part of the bill in storefronts.
What replaces it
The forward-looking piece of the plan may matter more locally than the closures themselves. West Marine intends to build around West Marine Pro, its wholesale and professional division, which the company says generates more than 40 percent of total revenue. Surviving stores are slated for remodeling that allocates more floor space to high-volume marine parts and less to discretionary retail, with real-time inventory visibility for commercial accounts [Marine Industry News, cited in TheStreet, 2026].
Read plainly, that is a decision to serve marina operators, technicians, fleet managers and boat builders rather than the weekend owner buying a life jacket and a bag of ice. The Grand Strand has plenty of both, but the recreational customer was the one being deprioritized — and the recreational customer is exactly who a Highway 17 storefront serves.
That creates an opening. Horry and Georgetown counties have independent marine supply operators, marina ship’s stores, and outboard dealers who now face a competitive landscape they have not seen in twenty years. Whether local businesses capture that demand or whether it drifts to Amazon and West Marine’s own website is a genuinely open question, and one worth watching over the next two seasons.
For customers holding gift cards or pending orders, the company’s guidance is narrow: gift cards remain usable at a closing store up to its final day, online, or at any other location, and rewards accounts stay active — but all sales at closing stores are final, with no returns or exchanges [West Marine, 2026].
The takeaway for the Grand Strand
Two empty boxes on Highway 17 are not a verdict on Horry County. They are the local residue of a leveraged retail structure that ran out of room, and the pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched national chains cycle through this market: expansion financed with debt, a private equity ownership chain, a restructuring that protects the lenders and clears the leases, and a smaller company that emerges pointed at a different customer.
What is worth tracking now is what happens to the real estate, whether local marine businesses expand into the gap, and how many Grand Strand jobs went with the closures — a number West Marine has not made public. Those are county-level questions, and they will be answered here, not in a Delaware courtroom.
Further Reading
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine to close 4 SC stores after bankruptcy filing — The Post and Courier
West Marine Stores To Close – Outdoors retailer closing 91 stores in Chapter 11 bankruptcy (full store list) — TheStreet
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine now plans to close more than half its stores in bankruptcy process — Shop Eat Surf Outdoor
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine’s reorganization plan wins court approval — Shop Eat Surf Outdoor
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine’s reorganisation plan confirmed by Delaware court — Powerboat News
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine cancels bankruptcy auction, pursues reorganization plan — SGB Media
West Marine Stores To Close – Boating supply retailer to close 4 stores in region after Chapter 11 filing — Business Observer
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine’s slow capsize: debt, bad weather, and a pandemic hangover — Shop Eat Surf Outdoor
West Marine Stores To Close – Official case docket — In re West Marine, Inc., Case No. 26-10794 (KBO) — Verita Global, claims and noticing agent
West Marine Stores To Close – West Marine store closure information page — West Marine
