ONE AND ALL: Home Port, Port Adelaide

The emphasis here is on trial and error…and extending your personal limits….which also means harnessing your fear…..literally. This device is your lifeline when out on the rigging….and it's no surprise that Dereck has everybody's undivided attention.

“This clip goes around the steel cable and clicks back onto your strap…..and then do the carabeena all the way up. So that means you're clipped on whenever you're going out here.”

And soon enough, the lesson becomes reality as Cathy Kuchel ventures out on the rigging with Mike Herbert to prepare the flying job.

It may look rather sedate from here….but from Cathy's perspective you get a sense of the speed of the One and All under limited sail.

The One and All was built by volunteers back in the 1980s and since then it has provided hundreds of trainees - old and young - with the opportunity to learn more about sailing and themselves.

“You have twenty-four people come on board who may not know anything about the ship at all…..and we teach them enough about the ship so that they can take over the running themselves. So that means everything from navigating, steering the ship…sailing aloft….helping with cooking and cleaning in the galley. So the ship, as I said, operates twenty-four hours a day, so there is always one of those groups of eight people on watch and they need to run those watches themselves eventually. So in the process of doing all that, they get to develop some life skills……so related to teamwork and leadership, working with other people in trying circumstances and it's also to do with having lots of fun as well.”

For Miki Bossley the love affair with the One and All began as a fifteen year old. When she and classmates from Annesley College took part in their first sail training voyage. Now she is a crew member with four and a half years experience. Not exactly old salt…..but certainly an accomplished sailor who along with Krystal, shows no fear as she scrambles aloft…twenty metres above the deck. For Miki, no two days on board are alike.

“It is the contrasts I suppose. There's days like this where there is very little breeze, just enough to be quite relaxing…and you can sit back and relax and then there's the days when there is thirty-five knots and you've got to pull all the sails down in quite a big hurry. There's nights when it's pouring down with rain and the nights when you're in shorts and a t-shirt.....it's the contrasts that you get everyday.”

And certainly the contrasts of nature as the day ends and spectacular Althorpe Island….off York Peninsula comes into view.

For me it offers time to ponder the achievements of the man who chartered this part of our coast nearly two hundred years ago.

The Postcards team hopped on board the One and All earlier this year to relive the epic voyages of discovery made by Matthew Flinders in the Investigator…and his French counterpart Nicholas Baudin aboard Le Geographe…..as they mapped the Unknown Coast - the coastline of South Australia. So join me on board the One and All at 8pm on Saturday 1st December - following the Test Cricket - for our Postcards One Hour Special, “The Encounter”.

And for those who want to experience life at sea under the sail…..then contact the Sail Training Vessel - The One and All on (08) 8447 5144.