John Naybor has one word for coastal marina owners just starting out or faced with post-storm reconstruction: Overbuild.

"We need to survive these storms rather than rebuild every time a storm comes through," he says.

Naybor, the former owner of an engineering company, knows what he is talking about. He bought a quaint marina in Pensacola in 2002, renovated it in 2003 and watched the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan tear it apart it in 2004. Of the 50 boats that remained in the marina, 43 were destroyed. John NayborHurricane Ivan brought destruction to marinas like Mahagony Landing, in Pensacola, Fla.

The Mahogany Landing Marina, as it was then known, was on the bay side, in a relatively protected site on Bayou Chico. Still, tidal surge that rose eight feet above the normal high tide pulled up the piles. The fixed wooden dock, first built in 1986, crumbled.

Like many smaller marina owners, Naybor was self-insured. That's the industry's way of saying he had no insurance. Faced with rebuilding, he looked at the task with an engineer's eye, and then called in engineers.

The new facility, called Palm Harbor Marina, is not hurricane proof. It is hurricane resistant. The difference combines economics and engineering. Building even a small, sheltered marina to withstand a Category 5 storm is prohibitively expensive. But something that can stand up to a Category 3 with a full complement of boats in the water?

Naybor thinks he's done it, and so do some marine experts.

He used high-stress aluminum docks made by Technomarine of Quebec that resist wave action because they float. Although most of his customers had boats in the 40-foot range, Naybor bought the system designed for boats between 60 and 80 feet long, to give the docks and the boats a better chance of surviving a storm.

The site presented some special challenges. The water is shallow but the bottom is soft. Really soft. Twenty feet of mud before you hit sand. Steel pilings were too pricey and wood pilings snap too easily, so Naybor opted for concrete. He bought what he calls a "forest" of spun concrete pilings manufactured in Malaysia that are 70 feet long. Each.

John NayborConcrete pilings are cheaper than steel but stronger than wood. These are 70 feet long.

To spread out the load, Naybor installed a piling every 18 feet or so. They are 16 inches wide and rise 18 feet above the water to stand up to storm surge.

"Tidal surge in our case was a killer," he says.

So far, the facility has passed its early field tests. The eye of Hurricane Dennis, a Category 3 storm, passed 20 miles away and the marina, which was still under construction, was not damaged, Naybor says. Hurricane Katrina caused tropical storm conditions in Pensacola for eight hours but no damage to the dock or boats at Palm Harbor, and the marina wasn't full or totally finished.

The bottom line for Naybor was that it made more sense to spend money building a stronger marina than paying huge annual insurance premiums. He estimates replacing the marina with a fixed wooden dock, like the original, would have cost $285,000. Building a new floating dock would have cost $495,000. To get to where he wanted – a facility that could withstand a Category 3 storm, a hit from a 65-ton vessel at 5 knots and wave heights of up to four feet – Naybor spent $650,000.

"It is well worth the extra money spent up front," he says.

For Palm Harbor, the math made sense. For Island Cove Marina, another Pensacola facility he owns, it doesn't. Replacing fixed wooden docks there, at a bigger marina, with floating ones would cost $1.2 million, he says.

At Palm Harbor, Naybor now has a nicer marina and can justify higher rates – 80 percent higher. He figures it cost about $150,000 extra to make the marina hurricane resistant.

But that's not counting the 40 palm trees he planted to accommodate the change of name.

John Naybor(Above) Naybor's marina before rennovations and (below) after it was hardened against hurricanes. Notice the long concrete pilings and floating aluminum docks.

John Naybor.