Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina

(Mount Pleasant, SC)—February 1, 2013. Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina’s newest addition, Blue Marlin Fish House, has announced Chef Charles Arena will be taking the lead as Executive Chef of this unique waterfront restaurant. Chef Arena’s love for food came at a young age while he was in New York. He lived above his grandparents house and fondly remembers Sunday dinners at 5:00 PM where the family would gather and sit for hours around mounds of food that his grandma began preparing at 5:00 AM. Arena started at the age of 14 working in restaurants where he made connections that led him to become a student at the Culinary Institute of America. Once Arena finished school he got his professional start in New York where he studied under Jean Jaques Rachou at the famous La Cote Basque before coming to Charleston to work on a Tom Colicchio restaurant project called the Tides at the Beach Club. For the last seven years, Chef Arena has made his home at The Boathouse on Breach’s Inlet where he has become known for his high quality of food, strong sense of community and desire to please each guest so they come back again and again.
Through his years in Charleston, Chef Arena has formed many strong relationships. Since 2007, Arena has been an Adjunct Professor at The Culinary Institute of Charleston at Trident Technical College where he has helped mold some of the future talent in the culinary scene. In addition, his connections with several local organizations have tied him with farmers and local fisherman which his how he is able to guarantee the freshest local ingredients in his dishes. Chef Arena will bring these ties to Blue Marlin where his focus will be using local sustainable ingredients while adding a modern flair.
“I am so happy to join the energetic team over at Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina. Watching the Blue Marlin Fish House go from concept, to design and development, to reality is an honor. I look forward to creating a menu that keeps to the flavors of the Lowcountry, both land and sea, and throwing in unexpected flavors to add a modern twist to some southern classics“ states Chef Arena. Blue Marlin is scheduled to open in the spring of 2013.
Blue Marlin Fish House will feature a rooftop bar, open air dining, 350 seats, and 1,000 square feet of private dining space for special events. The décor will keep with the Lowcountry feel of Charleston, with exposed brick, thick wooden beams on the ceiling and nautical accents. In addition to a new restaurant, the building will be home to 2,100 square feet of event space overlooking the water and a Marina Store.

(Mount Pleasant, SC)—October 30, 2012. Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina has announced the name of the new 350 seated restaurant and roof top bar being built on Patriots Point. The name was chosen to reflect the Lowcountry fishing culture and keeping with the already strong fishing theme of The Reel Bar. The restaurant will be called Blue Marlin Fishhouse after the 881 lbs state record breaking marlin that was weighed on the docks during a fishing tournament back in 2005. The décor will keep with the Lowcountry feel of Charleston, with exposed brick, thick wooden beams on the ceiling and nautical accents. The cuisine will be a balanced mix of land and sea celebrating Charleston’s long history with the ocean and serving local sustainable products, featuring Lowcountry favorites with a modern twist.
Currently new framing can be seen being erected and the Blue Marlin Fishhouse is expected to open in April of 2013. www.bluemarlinfishouse.net

7/20/2010 3:59:00 PM

They had me at the chocolate-dipped strawberries.

It's not every hotel that offers such a decadent dessert - decorated with orchid flowers, no less - as a bedtime treat for its guests. But at the Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina in Mount Pleasant, they're all about those little indulgences.

Along with the plate of six strawberries, our bedding was turned down and two pieces of chocolate were carefully arranged on the linens. Sweet!

During our stay at the Charleston Harbor Resort last weekend, we also enjoyed complimentary root beer floats on the patio and snow cones by the pool. They certainly know the way to this girl's heart.

Perched at the far end of Patriots Point a half nautical mile from Charleston, the resort offers something even the best hotels in the Historic District can't - a skyline view of Charleston. The panorama from our room on the north side of the hotel also included the Ravenel Bridge and aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, the centerpiece of the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum located next door.

Getting across the harbor to Charleston is as easy as hopping aboard a water taxi or catching a ride on the hotel's trolley.

The 130-room resort also claims title to the largest marina in South Carolina. In an upcoming blog, I'll tell you about the sailing excursion we took on the Cythera, a 42-foot yawl docked at the marina.

The resort offers several attractive packages to entice guests to the Mount Pleasant side of Charleston Harbor. I chose "Pedals on the Water Experience," one of three Outdoor Adventure options. With a two-night stay, you receive two complimentary bike rentals. I'll also be blogging later this week about our ride over the bridge and through downtown Charleston.

Whatever package you choose, you'll have the opportunity to enjoy the resort's private beach and pool, Jacuzzi and many recreational amenities.

But I have to warn you -- you might never want to leave your room. Handsomely appointed with a nautical theme, our accommodations featured the most luscious king-sized bed I've ever had the pleasure of crawling into.

Of course, coming from someone who often camps on vacations, you're probably wondering if my standards are up to those of Condé Nast Traveler. Believe me when I tell you, with six feather pillows, crisp white linens and a down comforter wrapped around you, you'll feel like you're sleeping on a cloud.

I was also a big fan of the room's Jacuzzi tub. My husband enhanced my bathing experience, gently tossing the orchid flowers from the strawberry plate into the water as I soaked in bubbly splendor.

OK. The Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina blows the bejeebers out of my tent. But hey, even an Outdoor Insider enjoys being spoiled once in awhile.

For Immediate Release, July 2010

Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina is pleased to announce that it has been certified as a Gold hotel by Elite Meetings International (EMI), an innovative company that offers solutions to assist top planners in researching the best properties for meetings and incentives throughout North America.

Elite Gold status is granted by EMI's Elite Meetings Advisory Board, a distinguished body comprised of meeting professionals and hospitality executives. The board considers the resorts and hotels based on a demonstrated commitment to providing an exceptional group experience. A number of criteria factor into the advisory board's assessment, including the arrival experience, accommodations, meeting and event facilities, activity options, food and beverage, and most importantly, service.

"Our goal in establishing Elite Gold Certification is to offer a peer-rated resource that supports meeting planners in recognizing properties whose high level of facilities, service and amenities place them among the best hotels nationwide," said Kelly Foy, CEO of Elite Meetings. "We're proud to offer Elite Gold Certified status to Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina. Our endorsement reflects our belief in the outstanding standards that visiting groups can expect."

"Having been chosen to be a part of Elite Meetings is a privilege and testament to the high standards we set to make each guest experience exceptional. To have our hotel be approved by both industry veterans as well as those who do business at our property is a real honor and acknowledgement of our hard work," says Tracy Mitchell, Director of Sales and Marketing for Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina.

A special July 3rd concert with Steel Pulse reggae band was held at the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina. ([url]www.CharlestonHarborResort.com[/url]) The brand new Lookout Pavillion facility and its adjacent woodland setting with view of the water provided a festive attitude to the concert that Brightsound Entertainment promoted, with proceeds to benefit the HIV relief work in Ghana. ([url]www.projectokurase.org[/url]) The reggae concert on the banks of the Cooper River, dubbed the Lineup at the Lookout saw concertgoers of all ages "Rally Round the Flag" to celebrate America's Independence Day. To avoid traffic many patrons took the water taxi service ([url]www.CharlestonWaterTaxi.com[/url]) to add the dimension of getting on the water - which is just another way, besides an outdoor concert, for people to enjoy our Lowcountry Outdoors! The return to Charleston of the roots reggae favorite Steel Pulse is cause enough for celebration, but holding the concert under the stars and along the Cooper River brings just one word comes to mind - Irie! The band is on a busy tour schedule, but managed to take the stage about 10 p.m. and launched into one long set of all their crowd-pleasing anthems. While the outdoor concert was crowded, a special VIP area was available for patrons, with perks like complimentary Crown Royal 'Black.' The resort hotel offers ticket and room package discounts for these type events, and it seems the only thing missing from their outdoor concert scene might be jerk chicken and Red Strip beer! - Jeff Denise, Lowcountry Outdoors, [url]http://sclowcountryoutdoors.blogspot.com/2010/07/reggae-on-river-charleston-harbor.html[/url]

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An orange moon is setting over Charleston when Lee Craig steps out of the sportfishing boat cabin. It's more than an hour before dawn, and the Top Pryority is more than ready, but the mate checks the rigging supplies, the hold, the bait ballyhoo on ice.

Down the line of boats in the slips at the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina, other mates are doing the same. The restlessness rumbles like the big sportfisher that's running generator power. The diesel smell hangs. In little more than three hours, the Carolina Billfish Classic will begin with a radio call, "Lines in." The boats need to be more than 40 miles offshore, in the Gulf Stream.

The rumbling dock has the feel of a safari lodge and NASCAR pit. The people aboard 50 boats in the competition have paid thousands of dollars each to enter different categories in the tournament with payoffs as high as $20,000 for a first-place finish.

They paid thousands more to get into pools of extra cash awards, with payoffs that could be more than $100,000 for a lucky boat. Hooking a state record blue marlin, yellowfin tuna, dolphin or wahoo could bring in a $2 million cash prize. There is, in other words, money on the line. Enough that filling a boat with more than $300 of fuel for a day's run, is nothing.

This is the third leg of the Governor's Cup, the premiere sportfishing series in South Carolina, run by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. The pricey pleasure boats that soon will dot the deepwater horizon are a new generation in a centuries-old lineage of ketches, schooners, sidewheelers and the like that are the heritage of the Lowcountry.

Listening and fishing

A big marlin is like a lion. That's how Jim Moore heard it from an older fisherman. The huge fish with the spear-like bill and sail-like dorsal fins stalk along just outside a school of bait fish, like the big cats prowl outside a herd of gazelle. Anglers will troll through bait fish for hours without a nibble, then the marlins will attack, as if on cue. Nobody really knows when or why. They just get hungry.

Moore, the owner of Moore Construction, is aboard the Top Pryority as a guest of the owner, David Wertan, because the boat he usually goes on tore up an engine. Moore has been deep-sea fishing for nearly three decades, fishing the Governor's Cup since its inception in 2002. He's a steady man with a deep laugh, a tournament winner, and a voice the others aboard will heed for advice. That's how he learned.

"It's listening and just fishing," Moore says. "So much of it comes with just doing it. It's so hard to teach somebody how to throw the bait back, set a hook."

Outside the cabin, the skies are graying. The boat kicks its way out to sea through 5-foot swells, pitching and rocking, the ride so jarring that moving around requires a duck walk. The boat plunges at one point, and the people sitting in the cabin get suspended a moment in midair. Nobody minds. Rough water makes for better fishing, hiding the lines from the fish.

The Top Pryority is headed for its spot, a GPS coordinate where every recent trip hooked sailfish. Marlin are "suck feeders." They don't bite their food but suck it into their toothless mouths. That makes them tricky to fish. But a lot more of them can be found offshore of South Carolina than there used to be, Moore mentions. Biologists say that's because the waters off Florida are warming, gradually pushing them north.

The fish appear to be one among many species of animals and plants shifting range in response to climate changes, a concern that's been whispered for the past decade among wildlife and plant watchers in the Lowcountry. Nobody aboard mentions that.

'Well-prepared luck'

Dolphin fish are "ram feeders." They attack the bait.

"They're like Palmetto bugs out there, all over the place. You'd have to be lost not to catch one," Craig says. Craig is a land surveyor who runs his own inshore charter fishing business, Captain Lee Craig. He's naturally restless, keeps a coffee table full of lures and riggings at home where he ties and re-ties rigs.

Like the others aboard the boat, he is an adept, experienced angler, a longtime mate, but to make ends meet he holds a full-time job that's not fishing.

Sportfishing is an expensive pursuit, the jingling in the cash register of what is said to be a $600 million per year industry in the state, dollars that tourism businesses and the state pursue.

The Top Pryority is up against pros in this tournament, paid crews who fish year-round. They have boats with intricate gear like pairs of electronically controlled dredges - fan-shaped riggings that will be hooked with ballyhoo, dragged spinning behind the boat to resemble a feeding frenzy of bait fish as a tease for the marlin.

Aboard Top Pryority run by Coastal Yacht Charters, the anglers set a lone, small dredge by hand. The boat is no slouch, a 1996 Ocean Yacht, a 48-footer with a fly bridge, a tuna tower and twin 525 horsepower diesels. It's as roomy as a studio apartment and tools along at 20 knots or more. Even at that speed, other boats headed offshore pass it one by one.

But it's not so much about beating the pros, because in fishing, "there's an extreme amount of well-prepared luck," says Paul Kemp, the Top Pryority's captain.

And on the boat today, there's a pinch more on the line. Another guest on the boat, Amy Little, wants to catch a sailfish for her birthday.

Little landed a 37-pound dolphin to win the ladies division in a 2008 tournament. She's an inshore spottail bass angler who took second place in a Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina tournament the week before.

Aboard the Top Pryority, fishing is about having fun, and after a few hours under the searing sun the humor gets ribald. Mate Joey Tuk has the job of prepping the rigs and hooking the bait ballyhoo. After one slimy batch he holds his hand up for Little. "It's your birthday, you have to lick my finger," he kids. That, she says right back laughing, would take a lot of liquor.

The boat has been fishing awhile now, following a "weed line" of sargasso. The only other boat in sight is a tiny dot on the horizon. It's mid-morning, the Gulf Stream current is running hard, most of the boats are reporting trouble staying where they want to fish. But four sailfish already have been caught. Game on.

When Craig and Tuk flung a web of lines overboard at 8 a.m., Craig spread his fingers out at the lines like he was casting a spell. "Eyes down," he says, telling everybody aboard to watch the bait for a "blue stick," the bill of a marlin coming up. They were right over the sweet spot. Everyone watched for that sudden strike.

Now, a few hours later, they're talking fish stories, football, making fun of Tuk watching World Cup soccer. There's no feeding birds, no flying fish coming out in ghostly white flurries.
Then one of the reels spins, whirring out a live, smooth peel of line. "Definitely a sailfish," Wertan says on the fly bridge. But they lose it. Not a lot of other boats are having that much luck. A voice crackles over the radio, "Maybe by noon."

'An escape'

Wertan leaves the fishing mostly to his guests and shares the piloting with Kemp. He pores over the charts and the electronic gear to plot out trolls, tosses suggestions about putting out new fishing lines. He runs a real estate company, The Wertan Team, for which Tuk works.

For Wertan, it's about going to sea. "You're just out in the middle of nowhere. No cell phone, no nothing. It's an escape. You never know what kind of day it'll be or what you're going to find. There's always something different, sea turtles, whale, dolphin," he says. "It's just such a different world, such an experience to catch a fish as big as you."

An hour later, the same reel whirs again. Little jumps in but the line goes dead. "Well, darn," she says.

"Tackle failure," Craig says.

Tuk says, "My bad," and takes some ribbing about his rigging. Moore and he use a cigarette lighter to melt the ends of the cinch lines, so the binding won't give.

At noon, Craig says, "We're one quarter of the way through the tournament. Don't freak out. There's a lot of comeback time left." He takes up the syncopated clapping of a football cheer.

"Go, fish! C'mon!" Little yells. She wants to fight one in. "It's the thrill, the rush. It's a good adrenaline rush when you get a fish on your hook," she says. Then the birthday girl laughs.

'An off button'

It's after 2 p.m. In less than an hour, the radio will call "Lines out" and the sportfishing boats will turn back to Charleston for the weigh-in. A few beers have come out. The crew is fishing to loud thumping rap for luck, the play list looping over and over.

"We had one. They were there," Kemp says from behind the wheel on the fly bridge. Moore has the binoculars on a research ship in the distance. He tells Kemp to set a course for it. Maybe they'll scare up a fish the ship has spooked. At least they'll move to a little deeper water. A few minutes later, a dolphin hits the line. Craig snares him and quickly reels him aboard. It's a little one, but it's a fish. Ceviche, he says, enough to feed the boat tonight.

"All right, lines back out," he says quickly.

Even at 3 p.m., when Kemp calls to pick up the lines, Tuk says to wait for the official call. It comes a few seconds later. The lines come up, Kemp throttles up the engines and heads home, leaving the rolling seas under rolling clouds, the weed line they thought would pay off. It's doesn't matter. He loves it all. The environment, the challenge.

"Everything's got an off button, but as humans we don't seem to be able to turn it off," he says. "Out here, you don't have a choice."


Reach Bo Petersen at [email]bpetersen@postandcourier.com[/email] or 937-5744.

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