FILE: Cliffs at Drakes Beach at sunrise.

Will Marona couldn’t imagine a better way to spend New Year’s Eve: out on the water near Drakes Beach with a friend, catching the final waves of the year.

The sky was clear, and the air was still. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day, the Fairfax surfer, 68, remembered thinking as he parked and walked past the closure signs on the main stretch of the Point Reyes beach. It’s the time of year when elephant seals show up in droves to haul out and give birth, and park officials shut down the southern edge of the cove toward Chimney Rock to prevent disturbances between people and wildlife. The public is still permitted to access other areas of the coastline, but Marona didn’t expect to cross paths with any other animals that day.

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Marona and his friend had been surfing for about an hour and a half before high tide, and the waves were better than they possibly could have imagined. “Then we kind of noticed the tide had turned, and things were starting to change a bit,” he said. “That’s when it happened.”

It was around 10:30 a.m. A set was coming in, and Marona and his friend were about 40 yards from the shoreline, working the same peak as they amicably chatted with one another. “Then it was like everything in the water exploded with this thrashing,” he said. “Something just body-slammed into me.”

A great white shark, which he estimated to be 13 to 15 feet long, approached him from behind and hit his leg before darting off into the water.

“It was really fast. It was really violent. And it came close to knocking me off my board,” Marona said. “When I recognized what it was, I knew there was no way I would survive it.”

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The shark was so close that he could see........

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