Customer Reviews

Five Fair Rivers: Sailing the James, York, Rappahanock, Potomac, and Patuxent

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As a sailor who relishes using a shallow draft boat to explore remote water passages, I thoroughly enjoyed Five Fair Rivers by Robert DeGast. His modest 21' sailboat with 4" draft brought him up the rivers on the lower western shore of the Chesapeake Bay to for a close-up investigation of the both the historical aspects of the Virgina Tidewater and their current state. DeGast's writings reminded of Tom Horton, another good writer who has poked about the Chesapeake Bay and shared observations about this fascinating estuary. Thoroughly recommended for all small boat explorers and those interested in the natural history of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Robert de Gast was born in den Hague, Holland and came to the US at 22. He has spent his life around and on the Chesapeake, and raised a family of sailors. He tells a simple, innocent and inviting story about one of his many adventures.

He describes the Chesapeake, the "five faire rivers" and other sights of beauty and wonder that Captain John Smith and the early settlers found and described in such exuberant terms -- and reports that much is unchanged.

He mixes geography, geology, history and personal experience in a wonderfully entertaining and natural way, and makes the reader feel as if he were there too. From trivial detail (toast from a frying pan, two eggs and a banana for breakfast and the complexity of rigging his solar shower), to historic analysis (why chose Jamestown Island, when the natives knew it was inhospitable?) to profound observation (from the profound effect of clear cut colonial farming on silting of these rivers to more modern use as sewers), he spins a lively yarn.

Like Jimmy Cornell in his "Passion for the Sea", de Gast sings the praises of shallow draft sailing and makes us deep keelers wonder if we are somehow missing something important. I think we are.

This book is a delight to anyone who enjoys simply messing about in boats, or has a love for Virginia's beautiful tidewater region and its tributaries.