As Paul embarks on his journey to Rome, Luke reminds us of his prisoner status. Paul is handed over along with other prisoners into centurion Julius's custody (compare Lk 23:25). Julius chooses a homeward-bound coasting vessel that is about to call at ports on the western coast of the province of Asia until it came to its home port, Adramyttium, located south of Troas, east of Assos and facing the island of Lesbos. Paul's traveling companions include at least Luke and the Macedonian Christian Aristarchus (Acts 19:29; 20:4; Col 4:10, 14; Philem 24).

Borne along by the Syrian coastal current—the Nile water that runs north—the ship, moving at a speed of three knots, covers the sixty-nine nautical miles to Sidon in twenty-three hours. Sidon, mother city of the Phoenicians, with its double harbor, figures prominently in Luke's Gospel as a model of repentant Gentile receptivity to the teaching of Jesus (Lk 6:17; 10:13-14; compare 4:26). It was probably evangelized during the Hellenistic Jewish Christian dispersion after Stephen's death. There were a number of times during Paul's earlier ministry when he may have visited the church there (Acts 11:19, 30; 12:25; 15:3). Through the kindness of the centurion Paul is freed, probably under guard, to visit friends in the city. They provide for his needs, which, as I. Howard Marshall (1980:404) conjectures, may have included conversation, a meal and some gifts to help on the journey.

In contrast to Jesus' suffering, Paul knows relief both from a centurion who shows kindness and from the companionship of friends on board and along the way. The importance of the support of Christian friends should not be underestimated.

On the next leg of the journey, as they strike out to the west, the travelers encounter adverse weather. Contrary winds from the west block their progress. Since their square-rigged vessel does not readily tack into the wind and make headway in a zigzag fashion, the crew chooses to use the island of Cyprus as a shield, sailing on its lee, its northern side which faced away from the wind. They may also want to take advantage of the westward two-mile-per-hour current along the southern coast of Asia Minor, as well as the land breezes that at night flow down the valleys perpendicular to the sea (see Heliodorus Aethiopica 4.16.10). So as Luke narrates, We . . . sailed across the open sea off the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, [and] landed at Myra in Lycia. Myra, on the western third of Asia Minor's south coast, was a chief port of the imperial grain service, a regular port of call for grain vessels taking the northerly route from Alexandria to Rome. Archaeological remains of the grain storage facilities attest to its importance.

The Alexandrian ship sailing for Italy, on which the centurion books passage for himself and his prisoners, is probably a vessel in the imperial grain fleet. Since the main time for the Alexandria-to-Rome run was in late spring and early summer, the ship's presence at Myra in early fall probably indicates it is on a second run that the owners are trying to squeeze in before winter (Casson 1971:298).

On this portion of the trip—Myra to Fair Havens, Crete—the same contrary winds from the west accost them. After many days they only succeed in making Cnidus, a port at the western end of a long promontory of southwest Asia Minor which stretches out into the Adriatic. As they leave Cnidus and enter the open sea, the northerly winds of the Adriatic blow against them, preventing them from maintaining their westward course. So they drop under the lee of Crete, sailing along its southern coast, again using an island as a shield. Even so, keeping close to the coast and making westward progress is difficult. The ship barely makes Fair Havens, a harbor at the midpoint of Crete's south coast, twelve miles east of Cape Matala and five miles from Lasea.