“Where’s Johnny-Boy? Has anyone seen Johnny-Boy?”

That someone was pacing the corridors of Rip Curl’s Off The Wall crib searching for “Johnny-Boy” raised a few eyebrows among the gathered throng on the balcony. Kauai grom Kyle Ramey shifted in his seat and looked nervously over his shoulder. Camera rat Jimmy Kinnaird tugged at his lone chin whisker and caressed his beloved Panasonic P2, while expat photographer Sean Davey plucked one of the underarm hairs oozing out of his customised Hawaiian-style muscle shirt… then sniffed his fingers. But the latent fear was misplaced. Hawaiian bad boy Johnny-Boy Gomes wasn’t in residence. Instead, mild-mannered Brazilian Jean da Silva had inherited a new nickname. While da Silva bears little resemblance to the Hawaiian heavy, he does have one crazy heavy story to tell.

“I love Brazil but I don’t want to live there anymore.”

In early 2006 Jean da Silva won one of the biggest World Qualifying Series (WQS) events in Brazil – the 5-star Hang Loose Pro at Fernando de Noronha. It should have been the beginning of something special. A few weeks earlier Jean had finished third at the World Pro Junior Championships in Australia, and he appeared set for a breakthrough year on surfing’s professional tour. Instead the win at Fernando de Noronha set in train a series of events that almost cost the young Brazilian his life.

“The total prizemoney was US$110,000 and they printed it everywhere in the newspapers. People thought I got all the money!”

Not long afterwards a pair of hired thugs from Sao Paulo tracked Jean down to his hometown of San Francisco do Sul, a small island in Santa Catarina. “When I got home to my house there were two guys standing at the door with guns. I was like ‘F@*k! I’m gonna die.” Jean was huddled inside, wrists and ankles bound. “I had a gun pointed at my head and they were screaming ‘Where’s the money?’. It was heavy.” But, aside from the $300 in his wallet, Jean didn’t have any money. The thugs looted his apartment, taking clothes, surfboards, wetsuits, and his laptop computer. “They took my watch… they just took everything in the house. Then one of the guys said ‘Just kill him – he’s not going to tell us’. So they put a gun to my head. I closed my eyes and thought I was dead. But he didn’t shoot.” The thugs pulled a knife and threatened to chop off Jean’s fingers. Instead they stabbed him in the back and locked him in the bathroom, barricading the door with a fridge. “There was blood everywhere, it was spraying on the floor, the walls, the roof… I was freaking out.” In a state of panic he forced the door open and crawled outside.

Hospital, stitches, police…

“I left my house the next morning and never went back.”

Jean now lives in San Clemente, California. “They have açai, black beans, I sometimes go to San Diego for churrasco (Brazilian barbecue). I talk to my family everyday on Skype.” The 23-year-old has overcome a hip injury and has joined the hordes of Brazilian surfers that descend upon Hawaii’s North Shore each winter. He’s hanging with his brother Maycon and training madly for another crack at the WQS, aiming to qualify for surfing’s elite World Tour. After what he’s been through, you’d think the grind of the WQS would be a walk in the park.

Meanwhile, another day is ending on Hawaii’s famed seven-mile miracle. The waves have been small for days and Rip Curl’s Off The Wall house is almost deserted. Mick Fanning was the last of the Curl’s elite team to pack his bags today and set sail for home. But Jean da Silva won’t be going home. Not for a long time.

“I’ve got things I want to achieve in my life. I want to go back to Brazil, but not just yet.”

//BRENDAN McALOON

The highlights…

• Discovered a novel way to wake up this morning by walking out of my bedroom, uncoiling my phone charger, and in the process sticking my hand straight into the ceiling fan, which at the time was doing about 300rpm. It was one of those heavy, steel bladed things, and it stopped dead and went off like a gunshot when my hand hit it. The shock itself frightened the shit out of me, followed by the realisation that I may have in fact sliced off my right hand. Like having your life flash before your eyes in the seconds before you die, I imagined all the things my right hand and I have been through together over the years – writing a book together, punching that fat kid in the nose in year 7, shaking hands, wiping my bum  [the last two a little disconcerting in combination]. I am relieved to say the least to look down and discover that I still had a full compliment of digits, although I won’t be surprised if my hand’s fractured, the thing is up like a balloon.

• Kauaian Kyle Ramey paddles out early. The surf is pretty woeful, a couple of foot at best, but he’s got a tiny GoPro camera mounted on the nose of his board. It’s the size of a matchbox, but shoots 45 minutes of fisheye video, and the results are classic. The long, spidery limbs of Ramey are magnified with the fisheye, and his big top turns and cutties look like something out of a Tim Burton film.

• Mick Fanning has left the building. The upside of being a world champion is fame, fortune, a beautiful woman. The downside, as was demonstrated clearly today, is that packing your stuff can be a real bitch. Mick spends the entire morning running between his room and the garage, mumbling to himself about packing matters. A dozen boards go with him; a dozen more are ferried around to Wade Tokoro’s. There is no shortage of guys offering to make Mick’s baggage lighter by taking a board or a T-shirt off him. Mick spends most of the morning leaving various offerings of signed boards, T-shirts and books strategically placed around the house for his Hawaiian crew to come and collect.

• The tattoo studio continues to do a roaring trade in the Rip Curl House. Today it is Luke Stedman and Barney Miller’s girlfriend, Kate. Both opt for something musical – Kate a treble clef symbol on her neck, Steds a line from an MGMT song. Ben Ross, our resident tattooist, came to Hawaii on a holiday but he’s never worked harder in his life.

• We make one last run to the Kahuku Superette for a poké lunch. The spicy little cubes of raw ahi and rice are about as good as island food gets. With the clock ticking down on our stay we’ve got to gorge on it, as we need to eat a whole year’s worth in the next three days.

• Myles Padaca drops around with some early season footage of himself and Pancho. There’s some pretty incredible stuff there, one barrel of Myles at Sunset in particular. Both Pancho and Myles are North Shore gentlemen, seemingly unaffected by the intensity of the winter, which pushes some other locals to breaking point.

• Koa Smith is over from Kauai and is staying the night here in the house. We’ve been trying to shoot a session with the super-grom here and there for a week – the weather and a lack of waves conspiring against us. But as the ocean started to pulse to life again this afternoon, Koa showed and promptly bolted straight out the front. Stay tuned for the results tomorrow. Koa’s Mum, Jill is chaperoning and staying in the team house tonight, inheriting Mick’s Presidential Suite upstairs. She walks in and we explain to her that the buzzing sound emanating from inside is just a tattoo gun, and that the sheets in Mick’s room, having not been changed in a month, should probably have a date with the washing machine. //SEAN DOHERTY