Prevention and Early Detection are Key: Why I Chose to #GetNaked
Guest blog post by Jason Chambers, Superyacht Captain, Star of Bravo’s Below Deck Down Under, Melanoma Advocate and 2026 #GetNaked Spokesperson:
“I’ve spent most of my adult life on the water. As a superyacht captain, and more recently as a face you might recognize from Bravo’s Below Deck Down Under, the sun has been my constant companion. The saltwater, the open sky, the deck beneath my feet: it’s the world I chose, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
But that world comes at a cost I didn’t fully understand until it was almost too late.
Growing up in Australia, you’d think sun safety would’ve been drummed into me. And sure, you hear the warnings. You know the risks in the abstract. But when you’re working outdoors twelve to fourteen hours a day, year after year, sunscreen starts to feel like something you put on before a beach holiday, not something that could one day stand between you and a cancer diagnosis.
I was wrong about that. Dead, wrong.
I’ll be honest, I’m not the type to rush to the doctor. I suspect a lot of men reading this know exactly what I mean. You notice something, you tell yourself it’s probably nothing, you keep moving. Life is busy. The boat doesn’t wait.
It was something small that finally made me pay attention. A spot. One of those things you’ve almost stopped seeing because it’s just been there, part of the landscape of your own skin. But someone close to me looked at it and said the words I’d been unconsciously avoiding: “You should get that checked.”
So, I did.
My dermatologist confirmed what I’d been quietly hoping wasn’t true. Melanoma. The word landed with a weight I wasn’t prepared for, even though some part of me had started to suspect. I remember sitting there, running through the math in my head: the years at sea, the accumulated hours in direct sunlight and all those days I’d told myself I was too busy to reapply. It all crystallized in that single moment.
My melanoma was caught at a stage where treatment was possible. I want to be clear about something: I was lucky. Not because the diagnosis wasn’t serious, melanoma moves fast, and I’ve since heard stories that remind me exactly how serious it can be, but because I caught it in time. That is why it’s so imperative to get regular skin checks not only when you suspect a suspicious mole, but annually.
What followed was a series of procedures to remove the melanoma and assess how far it had spread. I won’t pretend it was easy. There’s something uniquely humbling about sitting in a medical office, waiting for results, understanding for the first time that your body has been fighting something without your knowledge. You feel powerless in a way that’s hard to describe if you haven’t been there.
But I also felt something else: gratitude. Every step of the process, every appointment, every follow-up and every clear scan reinforced the same truth. Early detection is everything! If I had waited another year or two, the outcome could have looked very different.
I can’t go back and undo the years of sun exposure. None of us can. But I can talk about it loudly, publicly and without embarrassment because I know how many people, especially men, are sitting right now with a spot they’ve been meaning to get looked at and haven’t.
Melanoma is the most common cancer in Australia and is the deadliest form of skin cancer, the most common cancer in the United States, and it’s entirely too common among people who live and work the way I do. The Melanoma Research Foundation’s annual melanoma awareness month #GetNaked campaign asks something simple and radical at the same time: look at your skin. Take off your shirt. Stand in front of a mirror. Book a skin check. Let a professional look at what you might be too close to see clearly. It’s not vain. It’s not excessive. It’s the kind of thing that saves your life.
I know, because it saved mine.
#GetNaked…It Saved My Life”