It's not always a whale of a trip

'Blow!" came the long-awaited cry, from someone aboard the Monte Carlo, and suddenly scores of people who for hours had appeared comatose were up and alert.

It was 3:44 p.m.

The vessel had left its San Pedro dock at 8:15 a.m. on a daylong search timed to coincide with the peak period of the northbound Pacific gray whale migration.

Capt. Danny Strunk crossed the bumpy channel to the west end of Santa Catalina Island, a popular passing point for thousands of whales returning from Baja California to home waters north of Alaska.

He conversed on the radio with island fishermen and tried to intercept whales they said were headed his way. Passengers scanned through binoculars, looking like human radar units.

No spouts. No blubber.

Long, uneventful stretches lulled some into slumber and lured others queasily to rails, over which they prayed for a swift end to their misery.

"It just goes to show," a booming voice over the P.A. informed those who were still coherent, "that when you think you know a lot about these animals they go and pull tricks like this out of the bag."

They are incredible animals; not just whales but all order of Cetacea: spellbinding, possessing miraculous, magical healing powers.

This must be true because when two whales finally did materialize, after the Monte Carlo had returned to the mainland, those silently begging for last rites sprung to life.

Pasty green faces turned flush again. And when the whales fluked for them, seeming to wave with their tails, their gloominess vanished like whale breaths puffed into the wind.

"At least we got one," said one relieved passenger, her voice trailing. "At least we got one."

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Our journey begins promisingly, beneath a radiant sky and atop a blue-green ocean stretching like flimsy cellophane toward the horizon.

The "Ultimate Whalewatch" is one of several annual adventures benefiting the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society, acs-la.org.

Bird specialist Kimball Garrett is aboard; so is whale expert Alisa Schulman-Janiger. Ninety passengers jammed aboard the 75-foot boat

anticipate a wonderful show.

Surprisingly, they include children; not many, but some, and without hand-held games, proving that a fondness for the outdoors still exists among a generation seemingly lost to computerized gadgetry.

"It's just such a mystery; you never know what you're going to see," says Cody Martin, 12, a budding marine photographer from El Segundo.

None of his friends are with him, he explains, "because they're all computer geeks, basically. They actually think I'm weird because I talk so much about whales."