"I'm not wet. Not really," he assured his teacher, Elaine Challup, as he wandered the dock at Homer Harbor's "load and launch" his sodden socks squelching on the pier's wooden slats in search of misplaced tennis shoes.
Moments earlier, Walter and roughly a dozen other Voznesenka and Kachemak-Selo students were paddling around in the shallow harbor water. Like buoys, they bobbed about, practicing cold-water safety techniques under the direction of teacher Lisa Stanyk.
"Huddle up," Stanyk said. "It's easier for rescuers to see you if you're in a group."
Every year, for the past six or seven, Stanyk and Anna Borland-Ivy, an Alaska Marine Safety Education Association accredited instructor, have brought students from the head of Kachemak Bay to either the Homer harbor or high school swimming pool to teach them the fundamentals of cold-water survival.
This year, 78 fifth through 12th graders from two of the three Kachemak Bay Old Believer Russian villages Voznesenka and Kachemak-Selo converged on the harbor for a day of real-life lessons.
Although anyone who has any intention of getting on a boat should know the basics of water safety, it is even more essential for the children from the villages where large percentages of the residents fish from a very young age, Borland-Ivy said.
Tanya Reutouv, 13, is an exception. She doesn't go out on the water that often and had never been in a survival suit before Friday, she said.
"I didn't know what we were going to do," said the Kachemak-Selo seventh grader.
But, sitting on the edge of the launching dock, waiting to go to the next survival training station, Tanya too seemed to be enjoying the experience.
Her long, flowing dress, which moments before had been tucked into the insulated suit, didn't have a speck of water on it.
All in all, not a bad way to spend a school day.
"Every time you get on a boat, before you go fishing somebody needs to show you where the safety equipment is," Borland-Ivy said to a group of the kids perched on the deck of Captain Pete's "Julia Lynn." "As commercial fishermen that is going to include several things. What do you want to know where it is?"
"Life jackets, flares, radio, life rings ," were the answers.
They even knew to turn to VHF channel 16 in an emergency.
Friday's exercises they included work stations on dewatering and repairs with the Coast Guard in addition to the water exercises were reinforcement for many students.
In addition to lessons gleaned from growing up on the water, they also were introduced to a lot of the training in dry-land reenactments at school throughout the last few weeks.
"When I started teaching at Voznesenka, most of the families were fishing families. I have fifth, sixth graders that go commercial fishing all the time," said Challup, a teacher at Voznesenka for roughly seven years. "So we've been trying to make it a big priority. I think the community wants to make it a priority."
Anyone who fishes commercially further than three miles from shore is required by law to have survival suits on board. But, knowing how to use them is another story as more than one student struggling to wriggle into the costume discovered.
"This isn't good," gasped one of the younger Voznesenka girls. "Much bigger. I can't even take it off."
Soon though, after donning a larger ensemble, she too was treading water, linking arms with fellow students and learning life-saving techniques that, fingers-crossed, no one will ever have to use.
Carly Bossert can be reached at carly.bossert@homernews.com.
Dutifully, the giggling youngsters only their eyes visible above the immersion suit's hood linked arms in a circle, "Ring-Around-The-Rosie"-style, and treaded water waiting for Stanyk's next instruction.
"All these kids fish and if they don't fish, they're out on the water, so it's really important for them to know these things," she said. "The more familiar you are with all the possible things that can go wrong, the chances are that (you'll be ready) when the time comes."
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