A Whale of a Watching From a Waco

It was one of those rare California communions; a wind-scrubbed sky bright to endless horizons, with all morning to cavort above the Pacific in a blood-red biplane.

Then the three of us--me and Greg Vusovich and his doughty Waco--went whale watching.

To Vusovich it wasn’t quite business. Sure, he is all disbursements and taxes in his role of Vintage Aero, a one-man flying circus offering aerobatic and sightseeing rides out of Torrance Airport. But each passenger, Vusovich says, is better seen as an expedient to one man’s love affair with old airplanes and the soul of barnstorming.

“There’s no romance like whale watching in the Waco, a big, noisy, open cockpit biplane of yesterday,” he says. “It never ceases to give me a thrill. I’ve seen California grays breaching and a mother with a calf on her back swimming through kelp.

“We’ve had blue whales, bright blue. During El Nino there were killer whales right offshore, right off Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“Yes, I have empathy for them. They have a special beauty and they let you know you’re not the only thing in this world. Maybe we should start thinking a whole lot more about that.”

But later. Causes can wait. For the breeze is stern and Vusovich is working it, angling the 1940 Waco across the runway for a short takeoff dead into the wind.

We’re growling over the coast in minutes. No smog. Not a wisp.

Santa Catalina Island is an etching unclouded by ochre smudges. Southeast we fly, to Cabrillo Point. Northwest to Palos Verdes and the sad sight of deserted pools and a parking lot. There used to be whales here. They left with the closing of Marineland.

At 1,000 feet (the limit imposed by California Fish and Game) Vusovich starts trolling San Pedro Channel. He has one eye on the whale watching boats from San Pedro and Long Beach. Their wakes are churning. When they are still, Vusovich says, it means they are on to something.

Through the headset, he talks of the stalk: “On a boat or on the Peninsula, you’ll see maybe the whale’s back or its flukes. But from up here you’ll see the whole whale. Blues up to 100 feet or more. Grays that go to 70 feet.

“When they come up to blow, they make a cloud of mist that hangs in the air and you can see it clearly. When we’re heading into the sun and the ocean is silvery, you’ll see what looks like puddles of smooth water. That’s where water disturbed by their flukes is stilling the surface. We call them footprints.”

There are few footprints this morning. The whales’ annual commute from the Bering Sea to Baja usually puts heavy traffic in the channel through April. It could be the weather, suggests Vusovich. Wind builds whitecaps and all that agitation sends whales deeper.

But thar she blew. Actually, it was more of a splutter. It was a large calf, maybe 25 feet long, cruising just outside the Long Beach breakwater. A California gray.

This solid, shining, undulating slick plunged slowly south. The whale ignored us and converging boats. Then it rolled and dived and disappeared and in its great grace there was scorn for man’s clumsy trespassing.

We flew closer to the lee of Catalina. Then back to the kelp beds. Into the sun to look for puddles. There were no more whales.

Yet no matter. For when there’s another pilot on board, Vusovich installs a stick in the two-place front cockpit and is happy to share his affair with the Waco.

“You have the airplane,” he said.

We did indeed. To climb where the sweet stink of hot oil rolls into the cockpit. To descend and feel the slipstream slapping the top of a helmeted head. To roll in and out of steep turns around a point and keep those upper cylinder valve covers just below the horizon and hope the instruments aren’t making a liar out of the seat of your pants.

Goggles. Vibrating wires. Fabric covering a biplane that was flying before Pearl Harbor. An old leather jacket. It is yesterday.

For bookings on Vintage Aero, call (213) 325-4622; $100 for a half-hour ride, one or two people.