The Sailing Acts Collaboration — Passage & Periplus

Carrying on a generation of work

In 2004, Linford and Janet Stutzman bought a 33-foot sailboat, named her SailingActs, and set out to retrace the voyages of the Apostle Paul across the Aegean — not to read about his routes, but to sail them: the same harbors, the same headlands, the same winds.

For nearly two decades that followed, Sailing Acts led voyages through the Eastern Mediterranean — bringing scholars, seekers, and travelers to the waters where the ancient world was shaped. Trip by trip, a community formed around the conviction that approaching these places from the sea is a different and richer experience than approaching them from land.

Passage & Periplus continues the work of Linford and Janet with new guides and the same guiding premise: that St. Paul, John the Apostle, Onesimus, and even Homer and Pythagoras are not merely historical figures to be studied, but presences to be encountered — and that the sea is the most faithful way to encounter them.

What we carry forward.

Aram DiGennaro joined Linford and Janet in their first summer, 2004 — a seminary student aboard a boat whose enterprise was still being worked out: the gear, the navigation, the art of backing a small sailboat into a narrow Mediterranean berth. He roamed the islands, rowed the dinghy into sea caves where the water goes an impossible blue, got seasick, and got hooked. Those weeks planted a question that took twenty years to answer.

The answer is Passage & Periplus. In collaboration with Sailing Acts, we continue the Aegean voyages in the wake of St. Paul — new guides, a new generation of travelers, the same premise. The scriptures were written in these waters; sailing them changes what you read. Paul crossed by sea, and something about the crossing itself belongs to the story. On our voyages, the readings from Acts, the letters, the discussions on deck — all of it happens where it first happened.

The collaboration sails a new route each year, always in the wake of St. Paul. For 2027 it is the Pauline Coast — Ephesus to Attalia, along the coast of Turkey. The October 7–17 departure is open for registration; the May departure is fully booked, and a September voyage was taken by a private group. Future years will follow the same themes along other itineraries.

Two books, one wake.

The scholarship

On the Face of the Deep: The Sea in Scripture

Linford Stutzman · Baker Academic

Linford's study of the sea stories of Scripture — reread through history, marine archaeology, ancient texts, and the wind and water of the Mediterranean itself. Written by a scholar who sailed these routes for two decades, it restores the sea to passages we thought we knew from land.

It is the scholarship beneath every voyage in this collaboration: the same waters, read closely.

The companion

Leaving Land: A Companion for a Voyage

Aram DiGennaro · Passage & Periplus

Written for the people aboard: one chapter for each day at sea, each pairing a practice of sailing with an inner one — leaving land, reading the weather, keeping watch, making landfall — anchored in an old story and closed with a toast on deck.

Its premise is the premise of the whole enterprise: at sea, our metaphors stop being metaphors.

Participants receive it when they board. Now in review, headed to print. About the book →

In the wake of an ancient voyager.

Carrying on a generation of work

What we carry forward.

Two books, one wake.

The 2027 itinerary: the Pauline Coast.