Still boy in the decade of 60, when I won the nickname Thyola, i spent vacation with my family in Guarujá, still very calm, few buildings and good beach and waves. It was at a normal day of sun and full beach (nor so much!), that I saw a wood board with a surfer, what called me the attention, waking up something very strong, that would give direction my life. In that time, it already liked art, I painted pictures and I arrived to participate of a Biennial one in SP. I came the architecture university and a lot of surf.

Therefore, the adventures to find waves happened so much for the coast from São Paulo (still without highway), as for the South (Santa Catarina). That woke up the will of leaving of the country the wave search. Peru was close, cheap and i had a lot of wave, being the first chosen place. We joined more than ten friends surfers and in an airplane repaired with glass fiber we flew to Lima for some school vacations of the most different. That went the starting point to a lot of works. In Peru, besides learning more about production of boards, it woke up a will of more and more to go behind the waves. The need to repair the boards gave me the chance of knowing the resin polyester, that makes my support until today. Therefore it turned the factory of boards with the name “Moby”. it was me glassing and my friend Britto shaping. Everything in that time was difficult and material hardly existed.

I decided to stop the university for six months (already in the last year of architecture), and with board and backpack in 1974, we went to América Central, going by Peru, Ecuador (Pta. Montanita), Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and, finally, California, that was our dream. But of course without money didn't give. Therefore, as soon as I arrived, I called Brazil where Madinho, my brother, sold my pictures and it ordered a money. I learned a lot in California working in the board factories, like Wilken Surfboards, where I met Pat Rawson, today famous shaper, When I returned to Brazil, Mark Jacola already shapeava and it was Lightning Bolt beginning in Brazil, with Gerry Lopez appearing in the layers of the magazines surfing Pipeline as nobody and making the marketing of the ray of the mark.

In 1976 I took the first trip to Hawaii to see the great waves closely and to learn stiller about production of boards. In that time, the shaper Tom Parrish made success with the monofins and the colored laminations with pigment in the resin they were line top. I had to have a good hand to stretch out a ribbon crape giving the same curvature that the shaper had given to the board, and that “feeling” i made surf boards they seem art pieces. In 1978, I Bleated it was one of the picks of larger happiness. Ours, that marked strong!!!! A lot of good wave and few people inside of the water. Then Nias, in 1979. They were thirty days of perfect wave. After hours inside of the water, walking for the bay, I thought: it is not real, it is dream... I Went to Australia, judging international championships and I had the pleasure to see Mark Richard two of the three championships that I judged to expire. The other was won by Cheyne Horan. It was another great emotion to participate in those great events.