15. The wind carried the ship away, and we couldn’t sail against the wind. We couldn’t do anything, so we were carried along by the wind.
16. As we drifted to the sheltered side of a small island called Cauda, we barely got control of the ship’s lifeboat.
17. The men pulled it up on deck. Then they passed ropes under the ship to reinforce it. Fearing that they would hit the large sandbank off the shores of Libya, they lowered the sail and were carried along by the wind.
18. We continued to be tossed so violently by the storm that the next day the men began to throw the cargo overboard.
19. On the third day they threw the ship’s equipment overboard.
20. For a number of days we couldn’t see the sun or the stars. The storm wouldn’t let up. It was so severe that we finally began to lose any hope of coming out of it alive.
21. Since hardly anyone wanted to eat, Paul stood among them and said, “Men, you should have followed my advice not to sail from Crete. You would have avoided this disaster and loss.
22. Now I advise you to have courage. No one will lose his life. Only the ship will be destroyed.
23. I know this because an angel from the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood by me last night.
24. The angel told me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul! You must present your case to the emperor. God has granted safety to everyone who is sailing with you.’
25. So have courage, men! I trust God that everything will turn out as he told me.
26. However, we will run aground on some island.”
27. On the fourteenth night we were still drifting through the Mediterranean Sea. About midnight the sailors suspected that we were approaching land.
28. So they threw a line with a weight on it into the water. It sank 120 feet. They waited a little while and did the same thing again. This time the line sank 90 feet.
29. Fearing we might hit rocks, they dropped four anchors from the back of the ship and prayed for morning to come.
30. The sailors tried to escape from the ship. They let the lifeboat down into the sea and pretended they were going to lay out the anchors from the front of the ship.