Small blue wave tattoo with white highlights in a Japanese-influenced style, placed on the upper back between the shoulder blades.

Blue wave on upper back

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

A small wave curls to the left across the upper back, with a white crest and foam drawn over a blue body. The linework is dark navy and the shading moves through turquoise and light blue to white highlights. The tattoo sits centrally on a bare back with blonde hair and a towel visible at the edges of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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You will not believe what Walter did on Tuesday. The Morwenna came in with her mainsail in ribbons and he went straight to the slipway without his tea, got down on his knees on the wet concrete and started painting a wave on the bow where the old name had flaked away. Nobody asked him to. Old Tom Pascoe stood there with his pipe gone out and said it looked like the sea had come up to take a bite out of the boat, and Walter just said that was the point.

He used the navy from the wheelhouse paint tin, then thinned the turquoise with turpentine until it ran like weak tea, and he dragged a brush of white through it at the crest so the foam looked like it was still arguing with itself. It curls to the left, the way the swell came round the point the night they lost the mooring. I held the lamp for him. He kept stopping to blow on the paint, as if breath might dry it faster.

I asked him what he was trying to keep out. He didn't look up. He said the sea only takes what it sees coming, and a wave painted on a boat is a wave that has already passed through.

The Morwenna sailed on Friday with the paint still tacky. I watched her round the point, small and sure, the white crest riding against the bow. Come home at Easter and see her. I think you'll understand what he meant better than I do.

Love, Maud

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