SUNSET BEACH — Hundreds of people gathered at 'Ehukai Beach yesterday afternoon to remember Joaquin "Joaco" Velilla, who vanished while surfing at Banzai Pipeline Thursday.

Velilla's surfboard was found at 'Ehukai Beach Park, but his body was not. After four days of searching, the effort was called off Sunday evening.

Friends and relatives as well as people who barely knew the surfboard shaper celebrated his life with a short ceremony ashore and lei that were carried beyond the break by about 80 surfers.

A hundred more people lined the shore, releasing their flowers into the shore break when the surfers cast their flower into a circle of boards, some of which were shaped by Velilla.

"He was a very reserved man, a man of very few words, but very strong action," said Mariela Acosta, Velilla's fiancee. "There's not much he would say. Pretty much he'd let the occasion speak for itself."

Friends said Velilla was always happy, loved to surf and took great pride in shaping a board, something he did for 15 years.

"He was the kind of guy you want to be around all the time, positive, nothing negative," said Timoteo Vendetta, a friend.

Velilla, 35, and Acosta, 32, moved to Hawai'i five years ago from Puerto Rico, where he had become an avid surfer at a young age.

"He was living his dream," said Scott Perez, a friend of Velilla. "He wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. Hawai'i was his home."

When Velilla came to Hawai'i, locals accepted him and shared with him, Perez said. "That was the Hawaiian spirit, and he had that in him, and he shared that among his friends," he said.

Velilla was one of three children of Carmen Chevres of Miami and Joaquin Velilla Sr. of Puerto Rico. His two siblings and parents were hoping to come to Hawai'i to attend his wedding, which had not been set yet. Instead they came here to support each other during the search for his body, Chevres said.

Chevres said she never approved of her son's surfing even after he became good at it and was making a living from it. But she never feared he would die from it, either.

"I was extremely impressed with everything, with the searching, the love of the community, the respect they have for him," she said. "I feel very proud of him."

Chevres said she is grateful for the police, fire rescue workers, the Coast Guard, city lifeguards and the whole community for reaching out to her family and trying to find her son.

"Today I have no words, only gratitude," she said. "To us, he's still alive and will always be in our hearts and in the hearts of all the ones that love him."

On the day Velilla disappeared, the waves were reported to have 20-foot faces. He was an experienced waterman and had surfed for more than 20 years. Recently, he took third place in an amateur surf meet in Hale'iwa, said friend Antonio Llop of Makaha.

Llop said he surmises that Velilla got knocked out when he hit his head on his surfboard or on the reef and drowned. Getting hit in the head is common for surfers but it is rarely fatal, said Llop, an experienced surfer.

Llop said he's sure his friend was looking down on the crowd gathered at the beach yesterday, enjoying the sunny but cool weather with waves breaking and dozens of surfers skimming the ocean curls.

"He's smiling and saying, 'It's all right. You guys do all right, don't worry about me,' " he said.