Fine line black tattoo of a sailboat above rolling waves on the inside of a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sailboat and waves on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of a sailboat with a tall mainsail and jib sits above a stylised wave pattern. The linework is thin and even, in solid black ink with no shading. The tattoo is centred on pale skin against a dark background, with the forearm curving across the lower part of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit by the oven, the dough won't wait for you to get comfortable. My gran told this one at this same bench every morning before the lamps went out on the quay, and she never once looked at the window, because she didn't need to see the sea to know where it was.

Keep reading

There was a boat called the Marigold Anne that ran out of Saltcombe with a single sail and a sailmaker who drank more than he stitched. One February the fog came down thick as wet flour, and the boat didn't come home. Her wife stood on the harbour wall with a loaf under each arm, because she had been baking since three and didn't know what else to do with her hands.

Three days on, the boat came in on the morning tide, sail torn to a rag, the sailmaker asleep in the bilge. He said he had followed a long swell that kept rolling the same way, a line of water that never broke, and when he lifted his head the lighthouse was only a stroke off the bow. He'd traced that route in his head the whole night, the way you'd draw a shape with one finger and never lift it.

Gran would wipe her hands, pull the first tray from the oven, and tap the crust. Some things you find by keeping one steady line and never lifting your hand, she'd say, and then she'd give you the heel of the loaf, because the heel is always the best bit and nobody ever admits it.

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