Sailing Acts: Following An Ancient Voyage

Prologue

August 20, 2004, Mandraki Harbor, Rhodes

I lie exhausted on my bunk in the forepeak of SailingActs, trying to relax while next to me, in the stuffy front cabin on the V-berth, Janet is sleeping peacefully. Although it’s 2:00 in the morning, vacationers still stroll by on the wharf of the crowded Mandraki harbor on the island of Rhodes. I listen, suddenly alert, as several tourists stop near SailingActs, talking too loudly. Their British accents are slightly slurred by alcohol.

Look at these sailboats. Fantastic way to go. Forget hotels, Love. Next time let’s charter a boat and sail when we come on vacation, a man is trying to persuade his partner. I can’t understand her reply, but she must have expressed some reservations about the capabilities of her would-be sailor. The man counters by talking even louder, extolling not only the obvious virtues of sailing on the Mediterranean, but his own competence. They wander off into the night and I realize with some alarm that something seems vaguely familiar with that little audio drama.

They don’t have a clue, I think to myself. They don’t know that earlier today our genoa was destroyed, that we had to place an order for almost $4,000 worth of new sails for which we couldn’t pay. They are completely unaware that the foam mattresses on which Janet and I are lying were saturated by countless gallons of salty seawater by a freak wave that day, and are still a little clammy in spite of being hung out to dry for hours. They are blissfully ignorant of the fact that I had mangled the propeller on a hidden anchor chain as I tried to back into a berth on the wharf of Mandraki Harbor just hours before, and that we’d need to have the boat hauled out and the propeller replaced before sailing any further. No, this would-be sailor is not only drunk, enthusiastic, and confident. He is utterly ignorant.

Had I been the same when I decided to sail the routes of the Apostle Paul? What possessed me to consider spending a sabbatical sailing the journeys of the Apostle Paul in the Mediterranean? If Paul described his sailing experiences as full of hardship and peril, what made me think that the same sea routes would somehow be pleasant and fulfilling?

Eventually I fall asleep and dream of stability, flat spaces, and home.

July 1955, Cascadia, Oregon

My father was preaching his Sunday-morning sermon in the small church in our logging community in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. As usual, I was seated by my mother, fidgeting on the hard, hot, sticky bench. It was the same every week: two church services on Sunday and, in order to keep up the momentum, one on Wednesday nights for prayer meeting.

This was a lot of sitting for a marginally hyperactive five-year-old whose mother in the 1950s was not burdened with modern tools of diagnosis and diversion. Instead of providing medication and coloring books, she provided me, without feeling any sense of guilt whatsoever, with all the treatment I needed—a stern reminder to behave.

That Sunday morning, not yet able to read and desperate for amusement, I paged through my mother’s Bible, looking for pictures. To my disappointment there were none, but there were some colored maps in the back. On those maps, with bits of whispered help from my mother, I met Abraham drifting southward through the Promised Land, Moses leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt through the desert, Jesus wandering around the Sea of Galilee, and Paul sailing up and down the Mediterranean Sea.

In the weeks that followed, I studied those maps and eventually became aware that God’s people, especially the important individuals in the Bible, seemed to travel a lot, leaving long, colored trails behind them.

The routes of the Apostle Paul fascinated me most, for his travels were so extensive that the map makers had to use a bewildering assortment of colors or styles of lines just to keep the various journeys separate. This was difficult because he seemed to backtrack and repeat certain routes a lot. Paul’s travels provided the most entertainment as I tried to trace each of his separate journeys, from beginning to end, without ending up in Antioch instead of Jerusalem. I liked Paul a lot.

In my 50s now, I’m still fascinated by these maps. I think the Bible must be the only sacred book in the world with maps of real places inside the back cover. These are unusual maps, depicting not just the changing borders of countries through history and locations of cities, but also actual routes traveled by people like Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. All of the maps and the routes, except Paul’s, are exclusively on land. (The Sea of Galilee on which Jesus sailed occasionally on a small boat doesn’t really qualify as a sea.) Of the heroes of faith, Paul was the only seafarer. Paul was different.

Seafarers have always been different from their land-bound contemporaries, and in their differences, seafarers have changed the world. They’ve demonstrated that there is more—always more—people, places, gold, languages, and land. Seafarers have expanded their own, and everyone else’s, universe. They’ve taught people to think globally. They’ve provided connections between isolated societies, and in the process, empires became larger, trade and war expanded, and ideas spread.

Seafarers were the forerunners of the Internet and globalization. They introduced alcohol, weapons, education, new food, germs, and ideas to people who couldn’t resist even when they tried. They carried gold away and left corpses behind. Many never returned from their ports of departure but died on the sea or in the lands they discovered. Others survived to grow obscenely wealthy, to enslave their hosts, and to build mansions that are now registered as National or World Heritage Sites. Whether seafarers brought hope or tragedy to their destinations, they always brought change.

Seafaring exploration and change go together like wind and waves. Men on ships, like seeds carried on winds or attached to animal fur, plant strange new ideas into the fertile fields of culture where the fall. If they take root, they may cross-fertilize, flourish, and eventually dominate and replace the indigenous varieties before they’ve had time to develop resistance. When seafarers return to their homes, they often bring the fruits of these cross-fertilized ideas back with them.

What follows is a sailing story, following one of the most influential explorers of history who, traveling by land and sea, succeeded incredibly to introduce an idea—the good news, Paul called it—into the pagan world dominated by the Roman Empire with its ancient and modern gods. Paul’s efforts changed history. Our voyage in this book was motivated from the beginning by a desire to better understand this unique and controversial man—a former terrorist turned seafarer, explorer, innovator, missionary, theologian, and saint—the Apostle Paul.

Explorers are easily admired or despised but not easily understood without going along on the trip. To really appreciate the experiences, drama, and development of Paul the explorer, you need to sail with him to Cyprus, up the Turkish coast, and among the Greek islands of the Aegean. You need to voyage from Caesarea to Rome and travel the dusty, rugged interior of Turkey and Greece. On the Mediterranean Sea that is both terrifying and idyllic, on the long, parched roads of those biblical maps, you will discover Paul, not only as the tireless missionary or the controversial theologian, but as an explorer and experimenter whose influence continues to shape the world.

Over the years, while serving as a missionary and pastor overseas, I read all the books I could find about Paul the missionary. As a theologian of sorts, I followed the theories and debates about the meaning of Paul’s writings. As a traveler I visited many of the places Paul preached. But following the routes of Paul through storms, darkness, cold, and heat, listening to the roar of the waves or the flapping of sails, approaching the legendary islands of the Aegean, anchoring in ancient harbors with their ruins of theaters and temples along the Greek and Turkish coastlines, viewing the fascinating cultures of the Mediterranean from sea level, following the voyages that changed the world, it is as a traveler and especially as a sailor, that I have come to better understand and appreciate Paul.

I invite you on board SailingActs to sail with Paul.

CHAPTER 1

Dreaming of Sailing Acts

We were standing at the ancient harbor of Caesarea, on the coast of Israel between Tel Aviv and Haifa, gazing out across the Mediterranean in the direction of Rome, when suddenly, as if being surrounded by a light brighter than the midday sun, it hit me. I was due for a sabbatical from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) where I teach courses on religion, culture, and mission. Standing there in Caesarea, looking toward Rome, it was crystal clear that I’d spend that sabbatical following the sea routes of Paul marked on the maps in the back of my mother’s Bible which I had studied 50 years earlier.

This was in February 2001. Janet and I were in Caesarea leading a group of students for a semester-long study program in the Middle East. In Israel, where we were spending about six weeks, the students were taking an intensive two-week course from the Jerusalem University College called Biblical Geography, History, and Archeology.

We marveled at Herod’s Caesarea as we clambered over the well-preserved aqueduct, the remains of pagan temples, and the hippodrome. It was at Herod’s most impressive engineering feat of all in Caesarea, the artificial harbor that was constructed using the new invention of concrete, where everything came together. Looking out toward Rome over the Mediterranean from that ancient harbor, my admiration for the Apostle Paul, the opportunity for a year-long sabbatical, the attraction and interest Janet and I have for the rich cultures and fascinating history of the Mediterranean, and our shared love of sailing—and possibly just some plain short-sighted optimism—all formed a question with only one possible answer. Why not spend the year sailing the Mediterranean, tracing the routes of Paul’s missionary travels, visiting every site mentioned in the book of Acts? Why not?

I had just finished reading two books, Bruce Feiler’s Walking the Bible, and We Followed Odysseus by Hal Roth. I was ready to explore ancient voyages just like they had. I wanted to sail all the routes, visit all the harbors, and travel all the roads that Paul had traveled in Acts. The prospect of Janet and me sailing in the Mediterranean, digging up new insights into Paul and his contribution to the world, seemed not only completely logical, but irresistible.

I suspected Janet was not struck with the same life-changing revelation there at Caesarea. I now faced the delicate task familiar to seafaring men since the invention of boats: persuading their wives to let them go, or perhaps even accompany them on their life-enriching, completely safe, horizon-expanding journeys. Men have (foolheartedly?) scoffed for centuries to their shocked wives and loved ones as they confidently prepared for insane voyages: Don’t be ridiculous!

Fearing categorical rejection, I outlined the plans to Janet, which went roughly like this: Save up money during the next couple of years. Buy an old but seaworthy boat somewhere in the Mediterranean. Fix it up. Sail the Acts routes of Paul in the Aegean in the 2004 sailing season. Winter in Israel and write. Sail the route from Caesarea to Rome in the summer of 2005. Sell the boat at the end.

To my amazement and delight, Janet actually supported and improved the ideas.

So began two years of reading. I read books about the Mediterranean, sailing, and regional travel and history. I read books on Paul’s thought and his travels, and a novel called Paul, and books on first-century culture, life, and travel in the Roman Empire.

We also began saving money. The sabbatical, if approved, would pay me two-thirds of my salary for a year. We figured this would cover our living expenses. All other expenses, such as buying and outfitting a sailboat, would be our own responsibility.

We started Googling the Internet, researching sailboats suitable for cruising the Mediterranean and living on for over a year. We combed the boats for sale sites, looking for the best boat we could buy on a limited budget.

I sent $48 to a company that produces gigantic charts of the Mediterranean Sea and, when they arrived a week later, taped them together and fastened them to a wall in our basement. They formed a 6x12-foot mega-chart for plotting routes and dreaming.

I spent evenings looking at the amazing variety of countries around the rim of the Mediterranean—Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Gaza Strip, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. I thought about the way the Roman Empire once tied them all together, how Christianity did the same, and how Islam attempted to do so. We’d be sailing history, religion, and cultures when we sailed the Mediterranean, the liquid center of an incredible empire.

We tied rope to objects in the basement and, in front of that huge chart, practiced our bowlines, clove hitches, sheet bends, and other knots. We hung another smaller chart of the Mediterranean in our library above the desk with the planned routes boldly drawn. This one was to impress our guests. I figured the more people who knew of our plans, the harder it would be for us to back out if we got cold feet.

Janet and I gave each other presents like foul-weather gear and safety harnesses for three Christmases in a row. For Christmas 2001, Janet and I gave each other a Comprehensive Sailing Course to be taken the following summer. We made it increasingly difficult to change our minds. We were giving each other gifts of commitment.

Two years of thinking through the implications the idea would have on our future forced us to face some tough issues. One of the most difficult decisions concerned Janet’s position as EMU’s director of parent and alumni relations. She spent 12 rewarding and challenging years in this position, and wanted to continue. She proposed a leave of absence, which was denied. If Janet wanted to be part of the sabbatical project, she needed to resign her position with no guarantees of a future position at EMU when she returned. We talked about it often. Maybe you could continue, I suggested, and join me in the summers for a while.

But Janet wanted to take part in the whole thing and so, after weighing the options, she resigned from a position she loved and informed a tearful staff. Doubts, tears, fears, euphoria, excitement, uncertainty, and occasional struggles with depression went into this tough decision.

In the summer of 2002, Janet and I took the sailing course we’d given each other as presents the previous Christmas. It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to sail. We’d learned during the years we lived in Perth, Australia, from 1986-1990. We had arrived in Australia just as the America’s Cup races were finishing in Perth, and the excitement moved us to take advantage of the vast sailing waters in and around Perth. We bought a small sailboat and learned to sail. After moving to Virginia in 1991, we bought a small pocket cruiser, a 16-foot, trailerable Compac Yacht in which we explored the Chesapeake Bay for a number of summers.

What Janet and I had never done was prolonged cruising, passage-making, and living aboard a sailboat for more than three days at a time. Now we were planning 15 months in foreign cultures, unknown seas, and new living conditions.

The intensive American Sailing Association course took us through three levels in one week: Basic Keelboat Sailing Standard, Basic Coastal Cruising Standard, and Bareboat Chartering Standard. During this week aboard a 41-foot Benentau, we became familiar with the abundance of skills needed for extended cruising: boat and sail handling under all kinds of conditions; navigation; mechanics; maintenance; and living in claustrophobic, tiny spaces with others.

Captain Joe, the instructor, was adamant about the value of this course. If one of you falls overboard, he lectured Janet and me, the other has to be able to rescue that person without any help.

Then he made Janet and me practice with a life jacket he’d fling into the water without warning, yelling, Man overboard! He’d let whichever one of us was at the wheel at the time turn the 41-foot monster around by ourselves and rescue the life jacket. This isn’t an easy task for one person in a stiff breeze under sail. To put it bluntly, I’m fortunate it was just a life jacket being rescued that first time and not myself—or I wouldn’t be writing this book! Later, sailing in the Mediterranean, we’d appreciate the value of that excellent course over and over again. At the end of the week, we passed the exam and each received a little log book documenting our success.

Two years before our planned departure in May 2004, we designated a cabinet in our library as our sea chest into which we put anything we planned to take with us for the voyage. It gradually filled with books, instruments, boating gear, and documents. We proudly added the log books to this growing collection.

But we were preparing and saving for a sabbatical that wasn’t yet approved by the university. EMU is a wonderful place to work, with administrators who care about faculty and staff. However, it is still an institution and, like all institutions, it has procedures and schedules for making decisions. The deadline for applying for a sabbatical for the following academic year is September 15. But how could I make concrete plans to move ahead on buying a sailboat in time to be ready to sail in May 2004 if the sabbatical was not certain until October 2003?

So on May 21, 2003, I submitted a proposal long before the deadline with a letter of explanation. Having submitted the letter, there was nothing to do but to plow ahead with preparations as if the proposal would be approved. Better to have made plans and be disappointed if they cannot be implemented, I reasoned, than to wait until it’s too late to implement plans if and when the proposal is approved.

If timing was one issue, approval was another. Writing the proposal to be reviewed by a faculty proved challenging. I was afraid that the project would sound to the landlubbers on the decisionmaking committee like far too much fun rather than serious academic research. This needed to be remedied but it couldn’t be done by trying to persuade the nonsailors that sailing is often demanding work, uncomfortable living, and a downright terrifying endeavor when it’s not boring, frustrating, expensive, and slow. No, the proposal would need to address thesis, goals, methods, and outcomes. It needed to argue that the only way to learn how Paul’s experiences in travel shaped his thinking and his message would be to sail the routes he did.

Feeling pleased about submitting a well-reasoned thesis rather than we are going to enjoy life on the sunny Mediterranean aboard a yacht, I waited all summer for the response. But, of course, there was none. The sabbatical committee of solid, academic, earth-dwelling types wouldn’t meet until fall, no matter how desperate I was.

The fall semester of 2003 began as usual. I was teaching a full load and trying not to worry. The committee was scheduled to meet to make the decision sometime in October. On October 9, walking across campus in the perfect weather and magnificent colors of fall in the Shenandoah Valley, I happened to meet one of the committee members who said nonchalantly, We’re going to decide on your sabbatical proposal this afternoon.

I gulped. Really? This was earlier than I had thought. Now, the possibility of not getting approval loomed menacingly. When will I find out? I quavered to the committee member.

Oh, the provost will send you a letter soon.

So the decision will be made and I will be the last one to find out, I thought. It will be hard not to worry.

Hard? It was impossible. I began building scenarios of rejection, how I would appeal, negotiate, apply again. No, I’d tell myself, the answer will be yes. It has to be! If not, we won’t be able to afford a leave of absence for a year without shifting my research topic from Paul to something like piracy.

For the next three days I couldn’t convince myself more than a few minutes at a time before the doubts would return. Surely if they approved it they’d tell me right away, I thought one moment. Then in the next, No, they’d tell me immediately if I didn’t get approval. They’d inform me of the good news with a proper letter.

On the third day of this pitched, mental battle, I met the academic dean coming out of the auditorium. She said, Have you had any feedback from your proposal?

No, I said my heart pounding, can you tell me something?

Well, the dean hedged, you have more in it than you can do.

But it is approved?! I screamed mentally. Orally, it came out something like, Would you be able to tell me whether or not it is approved at this point?

Yes, with a few modifications, which the committee recommended. It is approved.

I’m not really the type of person who hugs academic deans on a regular basis, but at that moment I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms around her as I realized that, after almost three years of dreaming and preparing, we were going to sail the Mediterranean with Paul! Paul himself, commissioned by the church to sail from Antioch to Cyprus in 47 A.D. for his first mission journey, could not have been happier.

Janet was coordinating the EMU homecoming events that weekend and was not available to discuss our plans at length, but I caught up with her long enough to share the good news. Alone that evening I got out a calendar and realized that life had not gotten easier with the news of that day. Here it was, already October. In January, Janet and I were scheduled to take another group of students to the Middle East for the semester, returning to campus in late April. In addition to my regular full teaching load that fall, we had to finish preparing for that cross-cultural semester and had already started to meet regularly with the 29 students who were going along. Then we would be with the students in the troubled Middle East. This did not seem like the ideal conditions for carefully planning and preparing for a sailing sabbatical.

Since ancient times, and even today, the summer sailing season in the Mediterranean for most people starts in May and runs through September. In order to meet our voyage goals, we needed to start sailing in the first summer by June at the latest, preferably in May. But not only did we have no boat, we hadn’t even started the boat purchase process. Yes, I had spent many hours intently surfing the Internet looking at sailboats listed for sale in the Mediterranean, but the promising ones were clearly for people who owned computer companies, and the cheap ones looked like their mooring lines were all that kept them above the water line.

We decided roughly what we wanted: something about 33 to 34 feet long, old enough to be affordable yet well designed, in good enough shape, and built ruggedly enough to be seaworthy in all kinds of weather. Speed under sail wasn’t too important. She shouldn’t look too modern; a charter-type, sleek party boat just wouldn’t fit the image for the project. She should have plenty of space for living for 15 months, with room to take guests along occasionally.

So looking at the calendar that October, I realized, soberly, that we had only about eight weeks left to finalize all of the plans, including buying a sailboat, before leaving for the Middle East. I had no clue of the legal hurdles of buying, as an American, a boat with a foreign flag. This was good, because if I had known, I might have given up right then.

November arrived and I spent every day teaching and planning for the semester in the Middle East, and every evening in front of the computer, searching the Internet for boats for sale and regulations for buying them. I wrote to brokers in Greece, Cyprus, England, and the United States. If they responded at all, they seemed to have nothing promising.

The pressure mounted. Maybe we need to postpone for a year, we thought as Thanksgiving approached. Maybe we need to buy a boat in the United States and ship it to the Mediterranean. Maybe we could sail one from the United States to the Mediterranean.

No! said Janet with the authority of the first mate.

Why not?

Figure it out, she said. You don’t have enough time for that even if you did know what you were doing.

I figured it out. She was right.

Just before Thanksgiving, a picture of a boat in Volos, Greece, a place I had never heard of before, appeared on a Web site. The picture showed a rugged, rather traditional looking boat with two masts—a ketch—sailing smartly along with its three brilliant white sails filled with wind, heeling slightly in sparkling blue water with white spray flying, silhouetted against a perfect blue sky. Sitting in the cockpit were three relaxed sailors. I looked closely. One looked a little like me.

I read the advertisement. "For Sale: Westerly 33, Sailing Yacht Aldebaran built 1979. One owner. 35,000 euros. Located in Volos, Greece." The price in U.S. dollars was $43,000.

I carefully looked over all the information on the Web site again and again, which included several sketches of the Britishbuilt Westerly 33 inside and out. The description, sketches, photos, and price were all attractive. Something about this boat seemed right, a feeling I’d never had looking at the hundreds of boats for sale in the Mediterranean. I printed the information and showed it to Janet. Her response was exactly the same as mine.

Write to him right away.

I did. Dear Captain Hadjistamatiou, I wrote, carefully spelling out his last name. I have seen your boat advertised on the Web and am very interested in it. Could you answer a few questions? I hit send and shut off the computer.

All of my correspondence about prospective boats up until that point had been with boat brokers, not the actual owners. From this experience, and because I was writing to a Greek sea captain across six time zones, I didn’t expect a reply for at least a week. But when I opened my e-mail at work the next morning, there was a reply from Captain Hadjistamatiou. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was entering the strange new world of buying a boat I had never seen, from a man I had never met, in a place I had never visited (Volos, Greece).

But wanting as many options as possible, I kept looking for boats on the Internet. As December approached, the urgency of having a boat in place before leaving for the Middle East in January increased every day. A few days later, I spotted another Westerly 33 for sale in Greece, listed with a British brokerage, and sent an e-mail requesting further details. I was impressed with another quick response describing the boat. Another good possibility, I thought as I read the description. Now we have two good options.

The information did not include the name of the boat, but the description seemed very similar to the Aldebaran, except that the price was about $3,000 more. I was attracted to the Aldebaran because of the price, but was a little wary of doing business by e-mail with someone on the other side of the planet whom I had never met and didn’t know if I could trust. I began corresponding seriously with the broker.

So with two good prospects, I began to relax just a little. Maybe we’d be able to find a decent boat and begin the process of buying before we left for the Middle East in January. The British brokerage put me in touch with Gregory, an independent Greek yacht broker in the Athens area who handled the boats listed in Greece. I was impressed by the helpfulness and competence of the brokerage and Gregory, and decided that I’d buy their boat instead of the Aldebaran directly from the owner.

Where is the boat located? I wrote to Gregory.

Volos, came the reply. Suddenly it dawned on me that there was only one Westerly 33 for sale, not two. The owner and the broker were both advertising the same boat! I was corresponding to both about the Aldebaran without knowing it. Now we were back to one boat and two Greek sellers. This was not an improvement.

This was the first of many times that I was bungling into very unfamiliar territory. Should I buy from Captain Steve and save $3,000? But what about the legal work? What if he cheats me? Maybe I should spend the extra $3,000 and go through the broker. He could walk us through the steps and would likely look after our interests. Janet agreed.

Dear Captain Steve, I wrote on December 10. "We are very, very interested in moving ahead with the purchase of the Aldebaran, but I have decided to work with Gregory because of the red tape involved."

Captain Steve wrote back. That’s okay with me but you will pay $3,000 more than you need to.

I continued to send and receive e-mails almost daily to and from either Gregory or Captain Steve about the Aldebaran. Gregory sent me a list of steps that needed to occur to buy a boat in Greece and warned me that each step involving an official stamp from a governmental office could take considerable extra time.

The purchase process will go something like this, Gregory explained in an e-mail. "First you and the owner agree on a price. Then both the buyer and the seller will sign the memorandum of agreement. You can then have the boat surveyed and make the final deal contingent on the boat being in roughly the condition the seller claims it is. When you and the seller reach an agreement, you put down a deposit and that finalizes the deal. When further paperwork is completed and full payment is received by the lawyer, the boat must be de-registered in Greece and clear customs. You will then have to re-register the boat in the United States. She will fly the U.S. flag and you can rename the Aldebaran at that time if you want to. All of this from the Greek side will take about 90 days if everything goes well."

Gregory did not say precisely what each step would cost. He hinted fairly often about inevitable delays and I realized we had no time to waste. If we wanted to sail by June, we’d need to keep moving ahead with the purchase process and preparations.

With only weeks before departure for the Middle East, we decided to proceed with the purchase of the Aldebaran and committed to this by e-mail. Gregory wrote back, "Send 10 percent for a deposit, and the Aldebaran cannot be sold to someone else in the meantime."

We decided to take the risk of the Aldebaran being sold to someone else; we’d wait until we got a chance to see her before committing the deposit. We agreed that I would fly to Athens from Tel Aviv during the spring break in March when we were in the Middle East. I would look at the Aldebaran and a number of other boats in Greece, and make the final decision at that point. We’d either buy the Aldebaran if she hadn’t been sold to someone else in the meantime and if she appeared to be in the same good condition as she looked on the Internet. Or, we’d buy another boat that might be a better purchase.

We started thinking about a name for whatever vessel we’d sail. How about a Greek word connected to the Apostle Paul? I asked Janet.

You mean the Greek word for shipwreck?

"No, I had in mind something like Apostolos (apostle). Or how about Aggelos (messenger) or Klaytos (called).