Greetings, this is Ben Miller–your new ASA Social Media Coordinator. As you may know, Meghan Cleary is moving on, so I’ll be taking over all of ASA’s online platforms. I’m excited to get to know everyone and to bring you the latest news on ASA events, flotillas, and other sailing opportunities, as well as the goings-on in the sailing world. Meghan will still be chiming in with occasional blogs from her adventures on the high seas, but I’ll be your day-to-day writer.

Everyone loves a sea story, so here’s mine: I grew up mostly in land-locked Idaho, so my first serious sailing came in college, when I did some cruising in Washington’s Puget Sound. The San Juan Islands were a revelation to me, a world completely inaccessible to my normal life. I was hooked. Subsequently I enrolled in the Sea Education Association’s program, based out of Woods Hole, MA. This was a tall-ship sailing program that involved a 3,000 mile Pacific Ocean crossing from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to the islands of French Polynesia. In the course of this long cruise I became a shellback — I know it’s sometimes fun to haze the new guy, but you all have your work cut out for you to do better than Neptune does at the equator.

Trivia about me: I’m a little bit obsessed with nautical culture and lore, especially writers, from Captain Bligh to Herman Melville to Patrick O’Brian, and so forth. I have a dream (maybe a pipe dream) of one day opening a nautically themed movie theater. My all-time favorite sailor is Captain James Cook.

The last few years have been dry ones for me: I was in graduate school at UC Irvine and working as a teacher. I’m very glad now to be involved in the sailing world once again, and to swap sea stories with all of you fine folks on this blog, along with Facebook and Twitter. Please feel free to comment and get involved as much as possible!