Award Winning Author
Riding the Wild Waves of a Fisherman’s Life
Take a Journey back to 1973 with young Ben Neely aboard the Alley Cat, battling gnarly swells to chase albacore off Oregon’s rugged coast in a memoir brimming with adventure, humor, and a young man’s passion for the sea.
About the Author
Ben E. Neely, PE, is a guy who’s been shaped by the ocean’s wild heart. His dad, Harry, a true adventurer, took their family sailing across the Pacific in a scrappy thirty-two-foot boat, from San Francisco to Hawaii and Australia. Those trips built Ben tough. At nineteen, he was out on trollers off Oregon’s coast in 1973, wrestling with storms and laughing with roughneck crews. He later became an engineer, raising a family, but the sea never let him go. In his seventies, fighting dyslexia, he poured his soul into A Well Misspent Youth, reliving his fishing days with grit and a grin. He used tech to polish his words, making sure his story rang true. Dedicated to his dad, Ben’s tale is about chasing dreams and loving the sea’s raw power. It’s a life lived loud and free.