I finally fixed my 10 year old shellback tattoo

If you've ever spent any time at sea, military or otherwise, you probably know about line crossings, but if you're unfamiliar, it's an old tradition to hold a ceremony when you cross a line like the equator or various other significant demarcations, and the one for the equator is where you become a shellback. It's a whole big thing, and you can read about it elsewhere if you want, it's lots of fun. I crossed on 15 October 2015 in the Indian Ocean and thought I'd get a tattoo commemorating it when I got back to the states, which I did, with a map on the shell, and I thought it was neat.

What I didn't think about at the time, and neither did my artist, was that maybe it should be a sea turtle lol. Didn't occur to me for years afterwards. But I was sitting with Dan Morris in Manchester UK getting a cat done a couple of years back and we were chatting about my other tattoos and I told him about the sea turtle vs tortoise thing. He says, easy fix just blast a snorkel and some swim flippers on, all sorted.

So I finally got around to wanting to do it and went to one of my local guys, Scott Dowdy at Arsenal Tattoo here in Bryan, TX who did it originally, and I think he nailed it. Now he belongs at sea.

Thanks to Dan Morris at Tooth and Talon in Manchester for the idea, and Scott here at Arsenal for execution.