SAILING ACTS: The Grand Finale Tour
For 20 wonderful years, Janet and I have taken many tours by land and sea. From 3-5 graduate students aboard SailingActs and public transportation, learning voyages in Turkey, Greek Islands, and Rome by coach and ferry, on a variety of routes by Turkish gulets along the Turkish coast and in the Greek Islands, we have explored the routes of Acts and the Early Christian Movement in the Mediteranean with hundreds voyagers. These have been some of the most rewarding times of our Sailing Acts experience, if not our lives.
With the “grand finale” last fall of the special “On the Face of the Deep” tour with the shanty-singing group “Cantore,” Janet and I realized that we have run the course. We are still planning to spend time aboard SailingActs in the Mediterranean for as many sailing seasons as we can enjoy, but finally and reluctantly decided that to make promises for the future to lead the tours would not be fair to guests. Plans and projections in 0ur unpredictable world and lives are not as confidently long and ambitious as they’ve been in the past 20 years. We have not needed to cancel previous trips (except during Covid) and do not plan to start.
For the past year or so, I’ve been working with some younger experienced sailor/tour leaders who are eager to continue offering the SailingActs program in the same way. I will post information about any of these upcoming tours that are being planned when information is available in 2027 at the earliest.
In the meantime, I will post a blog about “On the Face of the Deep” tour we took for Eastern Mennonite University in September-October, 2027. On the “Resources” page is further information about, and links to the “On the Face of the Deep” biblical sea-shanties CD/Download, and my forthcoming book, On the Face of the Deep: the Sea in Scripture, that is scheduled for release by Baker Academic Books in May of this year.