SEA LEVEL, N.C. -- In 35 years with the merchant marine, Mike Kowal has stood on deck in 40-foot seas off Cape Horn. He has lashed himself down to keep from sliding out of his bunk. He has watched an iron ore transport go down.

So a little thing like a Category 2 hurricane was not about to chase the 86-year-old seaman away from the retirement home where he and other old salts have earned a reputation for fearlessly riding out big storms.

"I don't worry about a hurricane," Kowal said Wednesday at the Snug Harbor home as Hurricane Isabel barreled toward him with winds of more than 100 mph. "Never did."

The home, 30 miles northeast of Beaufort, sits right on Nelson Bay with little but salt marshes and some spits of sand between it and the patch of ocean known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic because of all the ships that have gone down there.

Tempest-tossed

But among men who have taken the worst the sea could throw at them and lived to tell about it, Isabel was seen as little more than an inconvenience.

"I've been here eight years and rode out three or four of them, so what's another one?" said 82-year-old Roy Brooks, who ran freight up and down the East Coast for 42 years. "The only concern I have is that a tree will fall over my truck out in the parking lot."

The Snug Harbor retirement home was founded for seamen in 1801 by Revolutionary War hero Capt. Robert Richard Randall, who stands defiantly in bronze on the front lawn. The walls are decorated with nautical charts, spyglasses and the flags of steamship companies, and a stained glass window in the foyer bears the home's Latin motto, "Portum Petimus Fessi" -- "We weary ones seek port."

The retirement home was opened to landlubbers in 2001. Still, half of the 105 residents are retired seamen like Charles Czarnowski.

Sipping tea in the home's cozy library, Czarnowski, 87, was having a hard time getting excited about Isabel. He was off the coast of Pusan just after the Korean War when his ship was raked at dock by 162 mph winds.

"There was 125 died in town that night," he said. "You're safer actually out on the seas on a ship than you are on shore."

But not everyone in Sea Level was anxious to see Isabel close up. Just down U.S. 70 at the Taylor Extended Care Facility, workers were rushing Wednesday to evacuate that home's 78 residents.

"Miss Jane, we're just going on a little vacation," nurse assistant Michelle Sanderlin cooed reassuringly to 80-year-old Jane Condon as she was strapped into an ambulance. "Everything's going to be all right."

Unlike Snug Harbor, which is about 8 feet above mean high tide, Taylor is right at sea level.

Resident Louis Truman Dixon, 56, has been in storms when he thought the walls would cave in around him. So the disabled fisherman was not making any waves about moving to higher ground.

"It's pretty grim today," Dixon said as he waited to be loaded onto a bus. "I've had enough of them. I dread this one."

Farther down the road, Myron Taylor was determined to stay.

Four years ago, Taylor, 66, sat in his 1988 Cadillac during Hurricane Floyd and watched as the roof of his trailer was sheared off and tossed into the surrounding salt marsh. Taylor has a new trailer, but he plans to hang out in that same old Caddie when Isabel comes ashore Thursday.

"It would take a right much for me to leave Sea Level," the retired state port foreman said. "You hate to leave it."

Back at Snug Harbor, administrator Pat Ausband said the old salts can be forgiven some of their bravado. After all, the one-story building is made entirely of brick, with concrete roof decking and steel joists, and the retirement home has laid in 6,000 gallons of generator fuel -- enough to run the place more than a week.

All but 11 of the home's residents decided to weather the storm at Sea Level. So what would it take to scare Czarnowski away?

"Raising the rent," he said with a guffaw. "That's what'll scare us."

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Allen G. Breed is the AP's Southeast regional writer, based in Raleigh.