In the steps of St Paul
Casamara
John & Susan Simpson
Tue 1 Jul 2025 16:03
| Browsing through a charity shop’s travel book selection years ago, I came across a book called ‘Sailing through Acts’. It told the tale of an American academic who decided to sail his yacht to all of the places visited by St Paul on his missionary journeys as described in the book of Acts in the New Testament. It was an entertaining read and sparked an idea that, whilst we couldn’t recreate the sailing journey without bringing Casamara up through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, we could try to see how many of the places we could visit as we pass through Greece on our way back to Casamara in Malaysia. A map of Paul’s three missionary journeys and voyage as a prisoner heading to Rome helped us to come up with a plan. We started in Crete and the story of Paul’s journey from Jerusalem to Rome as a prisoner. We felt a certain amount of empathy for him as it sounds as though it was a tough sailing trip. He was loaded onto a ship sailing north which had to pass to the lee of Cyprus due to winds being against them. Changing to another ship in what is now Turkey, they ‘made slow headway for many days’ and when they could not hold their course had to divert into the lee of Crete. They ‘moved along the coast with difficulty and came to a place called Fair Havens’ where they were able to find shelter. We could imagine the relief of crew and prisoners when they finally managed to escape the wind and take shelter for a while. We found it interesting to realise that these long sea journeys, without the benefit of modern navigation and weather forecasting equipment, were regarded as part of every day life in AD61 when Paul’s journey took place. Kaloi Limenes (Fair Havens) is still a natural port today, and is known as a bunkering spot for ships in the Mediterranean. There were two ships at anchor in the bay on the day we visited, and four large oil storage tanks on Aghios Pavlos (St Paul’s Island)! The road over the mountains to reach the bay was a bit hair-raising: narrow, steep and full of switch-back turns. We don’t know whether there was a settlement there at the time of Paul’s visit, but today’s village only has 17 inhabitants and felt very remote. Kaloi Limenes and St Paul’s Island Before reaching Kaloi Limenes, St Paul’s ship would have travelled down the eastern edge of Crete past Kouremenos Beach, and maybe the captain even considered it as a possible place to shelter. Today Kouremenos is known as a great windsurfing/wingfoiling spot so, of course, we had to go see what was going on at the weekend. As it happened, we encountered similar weather to St Paul, with winds so strong that flights to and from Crete were cancelled on the Sunday! John bravely hired some wing foiling kit and went out to try his luck in the strongest winds he’d ever experienced on a wing foil board. It was gusting up to 45 knots so he had to hang on a bit! Wingfoiling at Kouremenos Beach Our son, Tom, suggested we read Paul’s letter to Titus whilst visiting Crete. Paul had introduced Christianity to Crete and had left Titus there to organise the converts. The letter shows that Paul wasn’t too impressed with the way Cretans were living their lives and had lots of guidance for Titus as to what to do. As I sipped my nice glass of Pinot Grigio I read that Titus was to ’teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine’. Ooops! Thankfully, when I pointed this out to Tom, he assured me that Paul also said in his letter to Timothy that a little wine is OK. The impact of Christianity in Crete can be seen from the enormous numbers of tiny churches and roadside shrines across the island. As we drove east from Heraklion to Kouremenos we passed sign after sign indicating which churches could be found on either side of the road, sometimes as many as four on one signpost. We found Cretan people today to be lovely people; very friendly, welcoming and helpful. We’ve also been surprised at the extent to which English is spoken, which is probably a good thing as the alternative would be resorting to my dodgy Duolingo Greek! After the wind had died down a little we made our way to Siteia airport, perched on a hilltop at the eastern end of Crete, and flew to Alexandroupolis on the mainland. |