Jake Gordon

Freezing My Nuts Off

17 June 2001

I got back from a fantastic 3 day 3 night diving trip around the Whitsundays/Great Barrier Reef a few hours ago - top notch stuff. What most people do is a 3 day Whitsundays tour which just sounded so incredibly boring to me that I decided to do a proper dive trip instead - it included 10 dives (although I skipped one of them for reasons I’ll delve into in a minute). Got one well with all the guys n the boat as well - 10 of us in all, and we’re all going to meet up in about 10 minutes for some serious downing at the local boozer.

Diving in Malaysia and Thailand is sweet - beautiful blue waters with excellent coral in it… and all at the kind of temperature which feels warm and snug. Oz in the winter on the other hand has all that apart from the warm water - instead, it’s about 23 degrees and that’s pretty damn cold when you’re down there. Now, all this prolonged coldness is definitely not good for the big guys below, which became quite numb and not only shrink to ridiculously small sizes, but also get wedged half way up your belly and start aching like hell! Hence why I skipped one of my dives. Oh, and this isn’t just because I’m a weird freek - all the guys on the boat suffered the same ailment.

Well, after warming the guys up on dry land I’ll be off to Cairns tomorrow where I’ll start planning the rest of my travels - most likely to Sumatra, Bali and Lombok (and other islands) in Indonesia.


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by Jake Gordon, some rights reserved