There's always hope at the end of a boat, that place where the mysterious depths are a step away. This helps explain the fascination with whale watching.

It's why more than two dozen heads were peering out in all directions, crammed into almost every vertical space that could safely house a human, from the bow of the Island Adventure near Anacapa Island one afternoon last month. Hope seemed as distant and dismal as the silvery-gray water they scanned, looking for that magic moment, a spout from a blowhole or perhaps a tail slapped on the surface like an exclamation point.

Bob Ferris of Port Hueneme was among them. He's lived in Ventura County for more than 50 years, yet this was his first time out asking the local seas to offer up some whales.

"I'm calling on my grandmother Sullivan -- the luck of the Irish," Ferris, 80, said with a crooked smile.

He stood erect and resolute at the bow, a sentinel at post in a hooded rain-repellent jacket, practically daring the whipping breezes and slate-gray clouds that rolled in rapidly and seemed to stream the word "dull" across the sky to spoil his day.

Why else would he and the others do this? For a brief glimpse of a gentle leviathan, these oblong and bloblike behemoths of the deep. Yes, it's that time of year again. The ongoing migration of gray whales through the Santa Barbara Channel -- that sliver of ocean between the county's mainland and the four northern Channel Islands -- is just the start of the usual parade that also will bring playful humpback and gargantuan blue whales to the area in coming months. It's a time of great anticipation and celebration: Channel Islands held its Whales Festival this past weekend; the Point Mugu State Park Whale Festival comes this weekend, on Sunday, and the Santa Barbara Whale Festival is March 25-26.

Our area, marine scientists say, is one of the best places in the world to see whales. Of the world's 80 or so cetaceans -- the scientific order that describes whales, dolphins and porpoises -- at least 28, or more than a third, are found in local waters. Of those 28 locals, about 15 are whales. But the three regular whale attractions here are the gray, one of the animal kingdom's great long-distance marathoners; the humpback, the most playful and sociable member; and the blue, the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth.

Early word from scientists and whale-watching outfits is that it's a good year for grays. Some boat captains already have reported seeing humpbacks, which is a little early for them. Almost everyone says that the ocean in general is full with dolphins and other aquatic life.

"Everyone should go out there to see them," advised Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who counts whales for the American Cetacean Society's Los Angeles-area chapter and also teaches marine biology at San Pedro High School. "The more times you go, the better chance you have to see some great stuff."

She once saw a bottle-nosed dolphin jump over the head of a gray whale mother who had her calf on her back. "Imagine that," she said.

Gray whales are moving through the channel now as part of their annual migration between winter breeding grounds off Baja California and summer feeding areas off Alaska and Russia. This round-trip shuttle, some 10,000 to 14,000 miles, is among the longest of any mammal.

The area is experiencing the tail end of the southbound trips to Baja, which peaked in January. In mid-February, the number of northbound gray whales typically surpasses the number of tail-dragging ones still heading south, Schulman-Janiger said. The northbound procession back to Alaska should peak in mid-March and last into April.

Schulman-Janiger and others said they've seen a good number of whales already, and they all generally look healthy.

"The whales have been very good to us," said Cherryl Connally, who runs Island Packers with her brother Mark. Island Packers offers whale-watching boats out of both Ventura and Channel Islands harbors.

"We got into 'em really early this season, quantity-wise," added Jim Clark, landing manager at Channel Islands Sportfishing Center, which also offers whale-watching trips out of Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard. "And I expect sightings to increase in March."

That's possible. On the northbound trips, the gray whales stay closer to shore, in part because many of them are mothers escorting calves. As such, they are easier to see.

Farther up the coast, in Santa Barbara, Adam Waskewics said "it's been a darned good year" so far for whales. Waskewics is the office manager at Sea Landing in the Santa Barbara Harbor, where Condor Cruises offers whale-watching trips.

They have not only consistently seen grays but also glimpsed a few humpbacks.

"Hey, we'll take that," he said. "That'll work."

So that was the hope carried aboard the Island Adventure, one of the 64-foot-long high-speed catamarans that Island Packers uses to search for whales.

The trip drew people from the Netherlands and Hungary, members of some conference who came north on the chance, and even a couple from Boston. If they can wait 86 years for the Red Sox to win a World Series, they can surely wait several hours to glimpse a whale's tail.

They waited and waited in the four-mile gap of ocean between Anacapa and Santa Cruz islands, both of which sported regal emerald-green crowns, perhaps due to the plentiful vegetation-enhancing rains thus far this season.

They got skunked. Animals being the fickle beings they are, no whales were spotted.

The dolphins saved the day. Off in the distance, back toward the mainland, a huge commotion of birds -- California brown pelicans, western gulls and cormorants among them -- settled on the water surface.

Upon approach, it was obvious why: A large pod of common dolphins, perhaps numbering 1,000, was stirring up fun, trouble and the ocean all at once. The birds were there for fish scraps left by the dolphins, who were herding the fish beneath the surface.

The dolphins were their usual goofball selves.

They darted in and out of the water just in front of and to the side of the bow, as if showing off their gift of echolocation, their sonarlike ability to use sounds created by objects to locate them and give them an acoustical picture of what's going on.

They jumped out of the water in tandem, in fours, sixes and eights.

They rode both the bow and stern wakes of the boat. Their dorsal fins cut the surface quicker than a hot knife through butter, then disappeared in a heartbeat, reappearing just as lickety-split.

"Quite a display, isn't it?" Ferris observed. "It was worth it just to come out for this."

His companion, Pat Mann, 74, agreed. "I loved the dolphins," she said. "They were very entertaining."

Both are members of The Ocean Conservancy. It's stuff like this, the dolphin show and the promise of whales, that they try in their own small way to help preserve.

There will be other chances, perhaps the upcoming northbound migration of grays.

Or perhaps it will be humpbacks, which show up here in large numbers generally from May to August. Humpbacks are known for their spectacular breaches and their occasional habit of approaching boats. They do rolls and flips. They slap their tails on the water. They even clasp their 15-foot pectoral fins together. Some have compared their nimble antics to underwater ballet.

Later this year, it could be blue whales. The peak for them here is generally July and August, with some sightings in June and September.

The blue whale's tail of the tape is astonishing. They can grow to 90 feet in length and weigh 150 tons or more, easily dwarfing any other animal that has ever lived, including dinosaurs.

An African elephant might weigh six tons; a blue whale's tongue weighs more than that. What's more, that elephant could stand on a blue whale's tongue and not be able to touch the roof of the whale's mouth. A blue whale's heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle; a small child could crawl through its aortas.

Mann saw a blue whale once, about eight years ago off San Francisco. The boat she was on tracked it for five days. On the last day, they finally saw it surface.

"It was awesome," she said.

There's always hope at the end of a boat.