A woman hoping to get a tattoo of the coordinates of a memorable vacation destination instead got body art marking a random location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Last month, Bri Pritchett, 24, who lives in St Louis, Missouri, travelled to Sedona, Arizona, with her boyfriend and friends to celebrate being fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
On 11 April, Pritchett decided to commemorate the trip with a tattoo of Sedona’s coordinates, but due to a small error in the set of numbers, ended up with a different location entirely.
According to Pritchett, who wrote out the coordinates herself and handed them to the tattoo artist for her first tattoo, she had done a quick Google Maps search of Sedona and then “did a quick - and clearly inaccurate - conversion to format the coordinates the way I wanted them”.
But, instead of having 34° 52’ 12” N 111° 45’ 36” W tattooed on the upper back of her shoulder, she actually had the tattoo artist permanently ink 4° 52’ 12” S 111° 45’ 36” W.
Although the mistake is small, as it is just the difference of an S instead of an N, it means that the 24-year-old’s tattoo actually marks a location nearly 3,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean.
“I was SO close! The ‘S’ on the top one should’ve been an N,” she said.
However, according to Pritchett, although it would be an easy enough fix, she isn’t sure she actually wants to change the tattoo now, as she thinks it is amusing.
“It’s an easy fix if I want to go that route, but I might just keep it because it’s just as funny this way,” she said.
As for when she realised that she had incorrectly written down the Arizona coordinates, she said it took over a week for her to find out, and she only did after she posted a photo of the tattoo on Twitter, at which point her sister called her.
“My sister texted me after she saw and said she noticed it was wrong immediately, so from now on, I will be going to her before making any big decisions,” she said, adding: “I couldn’t believe it at first but I do find it hilarious now - only took a little over a week for me to find out it was wrong.”
