Attention, all ships at sea

ABOVE THE GULF OF MAINE - As the Coast Guard Falcon jet banked to starboard, the officers flying 1,300 feet above the deceptively placid seas spotted a scallop boat puttering more than 50 miles off Cape Cod.

With the remnants of Hurricane Noel expected today to bring gusts of more than 90 miles per hour and 30-foot seas, Petty Officer Brian Puhl radioed the ship named Frontier, warning its crew to find a port. The ship radioed back that it was on its way home to New Bedford.

"If they stayed out much longer, he would have been putting him - and us - at peril," said Commander Mikeal Staier, whose crew spent yesterday flying more than 100 miles off the coast, broadcasting warnings about the coming storm to fishermen at sea.

Noel is predicted to pummel Cape Cod and the Islands today with winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane and 3 to 5 inches of rain. In Boston, gusts may reach 50 miles per hour, blowing 2 to 3 inches of rain. The squalls were expected to begin by daybreak and develop into driving, windswept rain by 10 or 11 a.m.

"This is going to be a very strong northeaster," said Joe Dellicarpini, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton. "Not quite to the level of the Halloween storm of '91, but it's a very potent northeaster coming up."

Forecasters expect the remnants of Noel to pass 120 miles east of Cape Cape in the late afternoon. With winds howling out of the northeast, the storm is expected to slosh ashore with a tidal surge of 2.5 to 3 feet, which may cause minor to moderate coastal flooding in streets and basements on Cape Cod and in Bristol and Plymouth counties.

Forecasters were encouraged that the storm will probably hit well after today's first high tide, a break that should lessen flooding.

Fallen leaves will probably clog storms drains, exacerbating the deluge in urban areas, Dellicarpini said.

Officials are also bracing for widespread power outages as leaves still on trees catch the wind "like an umbrella," sending branches crashing onto power lines.

The unseasonably warm weather this fall had prompted many mariners to delay hauling boats out of the water. On Nantucket, that meant crews had to "scurry around a little bit" to remove more than 300 vessels in the past few days from the island's seven boat yards and three major harbors, said harbormaster David Fronzuto.

On Cape Cod, scallop dredgers and other commercial boats from the Chatham Fish Pier chugged to Ryder's Cove and other sheltered, inland waters, said Chatham harbormaster Stuart F. X. Smith. Other mariners have doubled the lines securing boats.

"We'll get a good breeze out of it," Smith said of the storm, "but nothing we haven't seen before."

One unique concern in Chatham is a breach in the sandy spit that forms Nauset Beach, a break caused by the last major storm, in April. A powerful surge from this storm could widen the 300- to 400-foot gap, exposing mainland to the ocean's fury and flooding the harbor.

Hurricane Noel, the deadliest storm this year in the Atlantic, slammed the Caribbean earlier this week with heavy rains that caused flooding and mudslides, killing 118 people, according to the Associated Press. The Category 1 hurricane yesterday drenched the Bahamas and Cuba.

"There is a storm coming - if you can afford to be back in port, this is a good weekend to do that," said Petty Officer Luke Pinneo of Coast Guard public affairs.

Though seas of up to 30 feet are expected in the Gulf of Maine today, the ocean yesterday looked flat. By late in the afternoon, it appeared that most boaters had gotten the word.

As Lieutenant Commander David Wierenga steered the Falcon over the gray swells, there was little but water and a nearly cloudless sky on the horizon.

They saw about one-third the number of vessels they would usually find on what they call a preventative search-and-rescue mission.

"I hope that means people are getting the message," Staier said.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.