Fine line black compass rose with the script words Keep a weather eye on the horizon, tattooed on the side of a torso beside a striped bikini.

Compass rose with script on the side of the torso

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black compass rose with dashed bearing lines sits on the side of the torso, with the script words Keep a weather eye on the horizon arcing above and below it. The linework is fine and even, and the shading is light, with the compass points and inner rings drawn in fine strokes. The image is black ink on skin with no colour, and the tattoo is framed in the centre-right of the photo with a striped bikini and foliage behind.

Fine line Lettering Other Compass Compass rose Script Horizon Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind has backed round to the south-west again, so I have carried the lamp oil down to the ward room and am writing this by the paraffin stove, which is the only warm thing left on Scarrow Ness. Your father's brass dividers are still in the drawer where he left them. I found them this morning while hunting for the tide tables, and I sat for a while turning them over in my hands. He used to walk the bearings across the chart with them, pricking tiny holes in the paper so the lines never quite faded.

Keep reading

The relief boat came out on Tuesday and the boys aboard said the Mary Ellen was overdue at Newlyn. I told them she would come in on the flood, as she always does, and they laughed kindly at me, the way men laugh at a woman who has been on a rock too long. I did not tell them I have not slept properly since the gale of 1947, when I watched the light go dark at Caddock and could do nothing but count the seconds between the flashes.

Last night the sea lay flat and silver, and I saw her lamp beyond the point, two long flashes and one short, which is her signal and always has been. I climbed to the gallery with the glass and watched her come round the headland, low in the water and taking the swell on her quarter like she had something to prove. I found I had been holding my breath for three days without knowing it.

So you see, I did as your father told me. I kept a weather eye on the horizon, and for once the horizon kept its promise. Come home on the spring tide. The kettle is on, and the dividers are yours whenever you want them. Your mother.