By Susan Okula
There’s nothing like the moments right before the start of a dragon boat race for Joni Adrian Krafft.
“Sit ready!” bellows the helmsperson, who is often Coach Peter Van de Castle. And the 20 members of the race crew bend their heads, lean forward in their seats, and extend their paddles, arms held straight out, paddles parallel to the water. It’s quiet in the boat, everyone breathing deep and listening for the next command.
“We have alignment!” Peter shouts, and the women rotate to plunge their paddles into the water and freeze once more in position.
By this time, Joni’s adrenaline level, like everyone else’s on the boat, is spiking. They are hyper-focused, 20 coiled springs waiting for release.
“Go!” And the 20 take their first forceful stroke, often led by Joni and her paddling partner in the boat’s first seat.
For the next two minutes and change, the drummer at the bow pounding out the pace of about a stroke a second, the crew focuses on power, stroke synchronization and form. Ignoring the competing boats, they execute a well-rehearsed start of 30 specialized strokes and then settle into a brisk race pace, listening to the helmsperson’s exhortations to reach, or give 10 strokes at 100 percent at the midpoint, or remember their leg action. Then comes the shout of “Power! Power! Power!” and the crew gives it everything they’ve got for the last 30 or 40 strokes.
And then it’s done; 500 meters in a little over two minutes.
“Racing is easy. Practice is harder,” says Joni, an eight-year veteran of the club. “You are prepared physically for racing from practice. Racing is basically two minutes of your life and you can do almost anything for two minutes.”
New members find out quickly that there is no judging of individual performance at an Annapolis Dragon Boat Club race. “We are out there to have fun. We like to do well but it’s more about getting out there and being with your friends,” Joni says. “No one should feel intimidated by racing unless they’re just not interested in it.”
In fact, the hardest part about racing for Joni is the downtime between the races at an all-day event. Club teams paddle for a little more than six minutes total in a three-race day that can stretch out for six hours or more. “That’s fine, you catch up with people. You just have to be prepared for it,” she says.
Joni, who led the club’s race committee for years, organized participation in venues that include places like Sarasota, Baltimore, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Florence, Italy. She estimates she has been in at least 20 race meets.
Brought up in Annapolis, Joni traveled the world working for the U.S. government before returning here in 2012. She is a survivor of stage 4 breast cancer. Diagnosed in 1995 at the age of 39 with two children who were 8 and 12, Joni knew her life was on the line. She underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and a month-long hospital stay for a stem cell transplant, which is rarely done now for breast cancer. She was in the hospital for a month as her immune system was knocked down to nothing and then her stem cells reinfused. It took a full year to recover. She went back to work and to raising her kids.
More than 20 years later, Joni, at 61, is newly married to her second husband Bill, a sailor and volunteer helmsperson for the club. Now retired, she volunteers at Anne Arundel Medical Center and is a part-time warehouse manager. She makes sure to tell new dragon boat club members facing a challenging diagnosis there most certainly is hope.
As she climbs back into the boat for her next race, Joni certainly is living proof of that.
