The “On the Face of the Deep” gulet tour that Janet and I led for EMU Alumni and Friends in September/October, 2025, was the twilight voyage of SailingActs Journeys. For the previous three years, like a desperate store owner hanging permanent “going out of business sale” signs in their store window, we had kept telling everyone, “This will be our last gulet voyage of Sailing Acts Jorneys.”
“Old sailors never die,” I’ve heard it said, “they just get a little dinghy” which may help explain why, when Janet and I were grounded in Harrisonburg for the winter as usual, by the time a new bright blue Mediterranean spring rolled around, we had once again organized another “final” gulet trip on the Mediterranean. It is so hard to voluntarily let go of blessings.
The idea for the “On the Face of the Deep” project began on SailingActs four years earlier. The “sea” is mentioned throughout scripture from Genesis (Creation) to Revelation (New Creation). All of the biblical sea stories are dramatic and loaded with meaning. They are deep, but most biblical scholarship remains on the surface of these deep stories. How can I introduce people to the significance of the sea stories in Scripture? Why are they there? Do they have any meaning for us who live in a world that is like the sea — unstable, beautiful, deadly, and enticing?
So I began to write biblical sea shanties that told the familiar stories about the sea in scripture from the point of view of non-Jewish observers or sea-workers in the stories, people with whom most of us can identify. Then the singing group Cantore composed the music and recorded the “On the Face of the Deep” album. I wrote and published a study and discussion guide to accompany the music.
Planning for the “On the Face of the Deep” tour for EMU Alumni and Friends just naturally followed. We would charter two large gulets to sail from Kusadasi, Turkey, the port for Ephesus , then to the Greek Islands of Samos, Patmos, Kos, and Rhodes, ending back in Turkey in Fethiye. Cantore would be aboard, singing the shanties in the appropriate places. 60 outstanding passengers on the gulets would live in the drama of the biblical stories and world-shaping history . (Click to see Cantore’s beautiful diary with stunning photos and videos.)
The outstanding video producer, Michael Hostettler was one of the guests. Michael is long-time friend who was the first person to set foot on SailingActs besides me after the purchase in 2004. He had come from Nazareth, Israel for a one-week “vacation” to help me prepare the boat for the sabbatical voyage ahead. Click to see his short, summary video from the voyage.
After 20 years of Sailing Acts Journeys, “On the Face of the Deep” tour was the sweetest “bitter end” imaginable.
Janet and I plan to continue to sail the Mediterranean aboard SailingActs as long as it is enjoyable.
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*The “bitter end” is the end of the anchor chain that is attached to a boat. It is used metaphorically to connote the end of a long voyage.