Black line drawing of four stylised waves above the handwritten words go with the flow, shown as a fine line tattoo design on a plain light background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Line waves with go with the flow script

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a simple line drawing of four stylised waves in a row, with the handwritten phrase go with the flow written beneath them. The linework is single-weight, smooth and unshaded, with the wave crests curling to the right. The drawing is in black ink on a plain pale grey background, with no body or skin visible.

Fine line Wave Handwritten text Line drawing

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

Tom, the tide table is pinned to the back of the bait shed door where you left it, and I have not moved it, so you can stop asking me to. Four waves came across the slip this morning, every one of them curling the same way, as if the sea had been told which direction to face and resented it. Your mother says I should stop sending these by the post office van and ring you instead. I told her the van takes a week and the phone takes thirty seconds, and a week is a good length for a man to think about a thing before he answers it.

Keep reading

The boat is still on her cradle. Harold from the chandlery came up Thursday with a tin of antifouling and a face like a wet Sunday, and we stood in the yard for an hour not talking about the engine. He said you'd been telling people in Falmouth that I'd taught you nothing but how to lose an argument with weather. I'd not argue that. I taught you to read the water by its colour, and to let the swell carry you past a bad mooring rather than fight it, which is the only thing I ever knew that was worth knowing.

Here is the last thing, and then I'll leave you alone. The night the Marigold went onto the Gannet bank, you were eleven and crying in the wheelhouse because you thought we were going down. I held the wheel and told you to go with the flow. You thought I was daft. I was daft, but the flow took us off the sand and into the lee, and we were home by three.

Come down at Easter. The kettle's on the same hook, and the bench still has your initials under the lip where you carved them with a fid. Mind the third step. It's gone soft.

Love, Dad