Rawson Sniper PU/Poly 6'4"

When you think of surfboards designed and shaped by Pat Rawson, you think smooth curves, trustworthy confidence and more often than not, rounded pintails that allow you to charge when the conditions get going. Pat’s HC+ shortboard design is known around the world and is a staple keeper in pro’s quivers for Hawaii, Indo and waves that demand perfection and control in board design. Rawson’s best selling board ever, the Rawson Impala, is a hybrid that captured the enthusiasm of surfers around the world with its easy paddling and wave catching, combined with great speed, maneuverability and confidence. What do the two boards have in common? The legendary Rawson rocker and rounded pintail tail templates. It made sense that Pat could design a board with the HC+ better wave performance and confidence, and bring in the Impala’s accessibility and easy of use. The Rawson Sniper blends these two boards together perfectly.

Tech Specs
• Foam forward outline and foil
• Bottom curves so subtle only Rawson can de-mystify them (below)
• The Rawson rounded pintail – timeless confidence
• 5-fin set up for tuning to surfer preferences and conditions
• Designed, shaped and glassed in Hawaii

The Rawson Sniper fills a much needed performance slot in most surfers' quivers. The Sniper’s design is focused on mid-range surf, with teeth for overhead waves when the opportunity presents itself. Being slightly narrower and thinner than the Rawson Impala, it’s noticeably faster rail to rail. The added tail rocker allows vertical maneuvers in the pocket. When the surf gets pumping, this board makes charging better, bigger and faster surf easy. It’s a paddle machine, allowing you to navigate the lineup, track down the bombs, get in early and then rely on the confidence of the Rawson rounded pintail to hold in off the bottom. It’s just as easy as the Rawson Impala to surf, but with a faster, more vertical performance and the ability to go into larger surf when needed. This also makes it a perfect choice as a travel board.

The foil on this board is magic. It has a lot of foam up forward for paddling and then really thins down in the last third of the board’s length. Even the 7’2 at 48 liters doesn’t feel bulky anywhere. They're just dripping with high-speed confidence.

The Sniper is a great choice for good to great waves at home, as well as a board that helps instill confidence when traveling to better wave destinations. If you’re a surfer who surfs average waves most of the time and just booked a trip to a solid surf destination, the Rawson Sniper should be on your shortlist as a board you can bring with you to bridge the gap and help you charge. It has the easy to surf feel of the rest of your quiver, plus you can get warmed up on it at home before sinking into the blue juice.

The Sniper is usually set up as a 5-fin, allowing you to surf it as a thruster or a quad. We surfed it both ways on a surf trip in Hawaii, in waves ranging from chest high to double overhead. Pat is a meticulous craftsman and designer, even going so far as designing the board and fin placement around a recommended fin template. Look for the notes on the stringer. There’s a reason people look to him for perfection.

We’re going to dedicate this “Insider Info” to give you the behind the scenes timeline of how a surfboard model like this rolls out:

January 2014: REAL has a “legends” lunch with Pat Rawson and Maurice Cole at Surf Expo in Florida. Talk about being at a table with two of the most influential shapers in surfboard history! Pat asks us what we’re looking for with new boards. We start talking about the HC+ and Impala and crossing the two. It just makes sense with how hybrids are becoming the dominant board and having a good wave hybrid is the next step to take.



October 2014: Quiksilver invites the REAL crew to the North Shore of Oahu for an early December week of surfing, live music and attending the Eddie Aikau Opening Ceremonies.



Rather than bringing sand to the beach, we ring up Rawson at Backyards and tell him we’re coming. “Let’s use this as a way to work on the good wave hybrid design we were talking about at Expo”. Pat builds us the first quiver of Snipers and has them waiting for us when we land in December.

You’re looking for trusty hybrid design that performs in better surf.

The Sniper is a balanced hybrid design between the Impala series and my HC+ high performance board. The bottom design offers the best attributes of the Impala series with a nice blend of high performance attributes like a touch more tail rocker and slightly less vee the last 18”, and a thinner, non-beak type nose. Also, the nose widths are narrower than the Impala.

The Sniper bottom is designed with a universal bottom curve and tail vee, which really facilitates?skatey, carving turns. The overall bottom contours forward enable the board to go well from rail to rail, even with wider widths than a normal high?performance?board.

There's low enough rocker throughout for great paddling, however,?that low rocker still feels loose?because of the carefully placed contours, and the new Sniper is great?for up and down?maneuvering.?

The Sniper bottom is designed with a parabolic (constant type curve) stringer curve, enabling the board to be ridden from rail to rail, and it's a universal stringer rocker curve I have kept close in my "alternative" board designs for that past 40 years.?

There's a bunch of subtleties in this overall bottom design that can't be detected by a first glance. The bottom from nose to tail, utilizes a tri-plane frontal design that enables this lower rocker board to maneuver catch-free, and also paddle well. The tri-plane at the wide-point starts turning into a flatter rail to rail contour, finally breaking gently into a medium tail Vee the last 25% of the board with double concave the last 14" of tail. ?That type of Vee design really gives the Sniper a nice projection out of a turn, and also enables the rider to ride large and small waves equally well with one board as a thruster or a quad: for sure a great board to take for traveling with a smaller quiver size!

The surfing public has been taught to think that the non-single concave, subtly contoured bottoms like on the Sniper are slow, but in fact the opposite is quickly apparent from the first wave caught. Many have commented how fast and loose that bottom setup really is!

There's an ongoing overall trend in board designs using extra foam throughout: most noticeably for large wave guns, but also in step up boards. There's also more custom orders for hybrids for small wave board alternatives. I think surfers in all age groups are starting to feel the advantages of the extra foam, and what it does for paddling in early, and the overall increased performance in the water.

The Sniper model features the wide point placement forward and thickness moved forward of center, which really helps paddling speed and early take off attributes, and also helps facilitate extra drive out of turns with more velocity.

Recently, I've been testing the Sniper series with some of my team riders here on the North Shore that surf at Backdoor, V-land and Rocky point. We found the Sniper has great overall range from small surf up to the overhead size because of the thinner racier tail and the universal bottom curve. That expanded range is great for a customer wanting a board for most wave conditions and can still handle overhead surf as well.

I've had a nice relationship with the REAL team starting with my kitesurf boards since 2008. Since then, we have developed my Impala series together with different variations, which has been a major seller in my Rawson Surfboard lineup since 2009. ?The Sniper came about from my dialog with Trip Forman (Co-Founder of REAL). The main thing we agreed on is there are a lot of surfers out there looking for that magic blend of hybrid style with high performance style to give them a paddling edge in the lineup, yet still surf high performance style well. I feel the new Rawson Sniper is that type of board, and is already getting some great reviews.