024_Jon McCabe: Inside the Parawing Revolution: Gear, Flow, and Ultimate Freedom on the Water

Season #1 October 05, 2025

In this episode, I talk with Jon McCabe, one of Maui’s most experienced multi-sport foilers, to unpack his evolution in Parawinging — from his roots in kiting to the cutting-edge gear shaping where the sport is heading.

Jon and I dive deep into advanced Parawing techniques, gear setup, and the fine-tuning that helps you get the most out of your foil, board, and bar system. We talk about mastering the stow and throw, finding flow state on the Parawing, and why this discipline feels like the ultimate blend of kiting, winging, and foiling.

We also break down some of the most important lessons for advanced riders — including how to dial in your Parawing setup for better control and power, the best approaches for downwind foiling and wave riding, and how to experiment with line lengths, bar configurations, and gear tuning for optimal performance. Jon shares his experience comparing Ozone, BRM, and other leading Parawing systems, highlighting what makes each one unique.

Throughout our chat, we explore what it takes to find true flow state on the water, balance power and glide, and unlock more freedom and connection through advanced Parawing progression. Whether you’re chasing speed, precision, or smooth transitions in variable conditions, this episode is full of insights that will help you take your riding to the next level.

This was one of my favourite interviews as it felt like a catch-up with a good mate. Thanks for coming on Jon!

#Parawing #Foiling #Podcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Today we have Jon McCabe with us.

Speaker 1 (00:02)
I'm stoked on parowinging right now, just frothing from my session earlier today. I don't know what it is. It's a truer connection to the wind, I think, and this ability just to shift into other modes where you're not using the wind as well. I think there's a routine that has to be kind of programmed in your brain and with your hands. Until you get a lot of reps at that, you're not going to have it. I'm pretty much always taking two parowings now.

Probably the first one out of the gates, I know I was, it just chopped the lines. Anything that's new, cutting edge, I want to be the first one trying it. I really want to take my personal riding to the next level. There's this visualization you have of how you want to ride, who you want to be when you're in these critical moments, right? It's obvious to me that

This is the future. What is the biggest parrot wing I can take? What is the smallest foil I can take? Where's the limit on this?

Daniel Paronetto (01:15)
welcome to the Lab Rat Foiler podcast. My name is Dan and today we have Jon McCabe with us. John is a multi-sports athlete. He's been around kiting, winging, foiling for a long time. John, you've seen these disciplines grow so now that you're into parawinging I'm really interested to see how your views on the parawing. ⁓

you know, will be for the next couple of years. So welcome to the podcast, man.

Jon McCabe (01:41)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm stoked on Parawinging right now, just frothing from my session earlier today and yeah, excited to share my thoughts about it all.

Daniel Paronetto (01:49)
Yep.

I love it, man. You still have wet hair. know, it's good. Good to see that, you know, you're getting your sessions out there and, and I like that we have so much to talk about, man. And you just won the race, the paddle Imua race, in Maui during the race season. You know, we're going to be talking about that. heard it was pretty gnarly experience from, you know, condition point of view and.

Jon McCabe (01:56)
Okay

Daniel Paronetto (02:15)
⁓ you know, the, end of the race must've been really exciting given the results. so we'll talk about that. We'll talk about gear progression of gear. I know you have a lot of insight on that as well, but I think it's worth, you know, us talking a little bit about your history in sports. have a very unique and rich background in, sports in general and extreme sports. So.

Take us through that journey, man. Like where did it all start for you and how did you ultimately, you know, end up foiling? But there was a lot before that that I think is worth us talking about.

Jon McCabe (02:49)
Yeah, so my journey started in West Virginia. You probably weren't expecting that. ⁓ I was pretty landlocked, ⁓ a skier from a little mountain town. ⁓ So snow sports was the start and just having that feeling of weightless ⁓ speed, I think, was kind of the attraction to skiing. Hitting the jumps.

Daniel Paronetto (03:18)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (03:19)
became like all I wanted to do, half pipes, you name it. So that was kind of my first taste of adrenaline, my first exciting ⁓ sport that I really committed to, I'd say. ⁓ From there, I ended up in Colorado ⁓ for school and skiing was obviously in the back of my mind every day I could do it. So.

I would be going up to the ski resorts in Colorado pretty much three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at school on Tuesday, Thursdays only. So I like perfectly made that schedule and avoided the weekend crowds altogether. So, yeah, I just really committed to freestyle skiing and never really got to that pro level that I...

Daniel Paronetto (03:59)
That's a heaven.

Jon McCabe (04:16)
thought I might be able to, but you know, I think I had ⁓ a lot of barriers to entry from where I was from to get to that level. I really think you have to be like ⁓ really born into it a bit. ⁓ But anyways, it was super, super awesome experience to get to go through that. And then ⁓ I actually was in Maui.

Daniel Paronetto (04:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jon McCabe (04:44)
for my dad's second, my dad and mom divorced. So my dad remarried in Maui. ⁓ I just so happened to see the Red Bull King of the Air ⁓ event while we were here, first time ever to Maui. I think that was in 2004 or five, I can't remember, but I got to watch like Robbie Nash and Ruben Linton and you know, the guys that, ⁓ you know, if any Kiders are listening or watching, ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (04:55)
Mmm.

thick.

Jon McCabe (05:15)
really wanted to be and dreamed to be because they're doing just the best errors you've ever seen. Megaloops, know, Jesse Richmond, got to give him props. He's still just charging better than anybody. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, no matter what that guy's going to send, you know. So they were all out there. He was tiny back then. I don't remember seeing him in the vent, but ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (05:21)
Hmm.

Mm.

The ultimate sender

Jon McCabe (05:44)
It's just ⁓ his brother Sean was always my like, I was like, if I could ever ride like that guy, it would be just the best day of my life, you know? So I got to meet those guys when I ended up moving out here. ⁓ But I guess before that, I go back to Colorado, start researching this kiteboarding sport. I'm like, man, I really want to, I want to land soft. So.

Daniel Paronetto (05:53)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (06:13)
Skiing was not gentle on my body. I was taking some hard landings, flat landings, you name it. Luckily I was young enough to absorb a lot of that impact, but it ended up being a transition for me because it's like, okay, well you're not really making this as a professional athlete, so why don't you look for other things that you just want to enjoy and kiting really had that draw to me.

Daniel Paronetto (06:16)
Yep.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (06:42)
Mainly because of how high these guys are jumping mainly because how soft their landing ⁓ so those two things just really I identified with and I knew I was gonna do that so it was just a slow progression from there to get to you know, the level of kind of on that now, but I Researched it. I'm seeing people have kite mares on every Every video I watch

Daniel Paronetto (06:50)
Yep.

Jon McCabe (07:09)
I'm just like, man, this doesn't look too safe. You know, I might need to like put, put the brakes on a bit. And, ⁓ as soon as the bow kite came out, which allowed for more deep power. And, you know, I kind of was right in that whole evolution. that's when I dove into, know, buying a big kite and really committing to the sport. I wasn't near the water though. So this dream of being in the waves in Maui was just a dream.

Daniel Paronetto (07:12)
Yeah.

Yep.

Hmm.

Jon McCabe (07:39)
it was more at that point for me to use it with what I knew how to do skiing. So I had a lot of time on a lake with the guy that got me into kiting really, Anton Reinold, Colorado Kite Force. Got to give him some props. I mean, he started a snow kiting school in 2004. So yeah, and it was...

Daniel Paronetto (07:45)
Mm-hmm.

sick.

Wow, that's really early.

Jon McCabe (08:07)
really successful. But he was the one that kind of brought me in after college and was like, hey, if you want a job, I got a shop. You can start teaching. I really didn't have much experience. I flew a trainer kite for like a year or two in a field. Got like launched one day ⁓ where I was trying to impress this girl. was like, it's going to be epic. And I like put my skis on first time ever having a ski and a kite together. And ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (08:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (08:35)
I go to this field and I'm like, it's really windy. I don't think I'm gonna let you fly the kite, you know? Let me try it first and I like clip into my skis and I hot launch this tiny little kite, like three meter kite or whatever. Kind of like what we're riding now is a Peter Lin though. But as soon as the thing launches, I go flying like full railing mode, ⁓ know, double eject, hit the ground, get drugged like through this snow.

Daniel Paronetto (08:50)
Yeah.

You

Jon McCabe (09:05)
And then the lines just break and the kite's gone. And I'm just so like defeated, you know, just like that was, that was not cool. And I think, yeah, she's just laughing. She's just like, you are a lunatic, you know, like, like this is what you do in your free time. Yeah. It was pretty funny though. But you know, and then I looked up the wind is blowing like 50 plus and,

Daniel Paronetto (09:07)
⁓

The girl was like, you were gonna put me on that?

You

Jon McCabe (09:34)
I don't know if you've ever been to Colorado, but there's like a big front range of mountains and the wind comes over those. So it's just super turbulent and Boulder, which is where I was. And yeah, when the wind comes, it's like, it's not even enjoyable to fly anything. It's really a catabatic and just turbulent. Yeah. But so from there, I didn't.

Daniel Paronetto (09:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (10:01)
That wasn't the end. got back on the horse eventually graduated had a corporate job lined up and Saw the cubicle I was supposed to work in and literally ⁓ Quit that, you know week moved up to the mountains because I had this snow kiting job lined up to and Started teaching it turned into you know

Daniel Paronetto (10:07)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (10:31)
racing and jumping off mountains and flying. There was a guy named Chasta back then. Everybody wanted to be in the snow kite world and he was kind of the face of ozone for me. yeah, once I saw him ride in person, I knew that I, okay, that's my ticket. That's, that's who I'm going to be, you know, I'll just be the skiing version because he was a snowboarder. But yeah, there was some,

Daniel Paronetto (10:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's sick.

Jon McCabe (11:01)
really, really talented guys that we all had a group and went on tour and really just had a really fun few years of snow kiting when it, I would say, kind of maxed out and then it never really took off like kiteboarding did in my mind. But I did, it gave me this really solid foundation to transition into the water. ⁓

Eventually started teaching in Maui and still here today. It's been over 15 years on Maui.

Daniel Paronetto (11:37)
That's sick, man. Yeah. It's, ⁓

what, what was that transition from the kite to the foil? you, were you kite foiling or did you try something else on the foil first?

Jon McCabe (11:48)
Yeah, so

first time foiling was with the kite. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (11:52)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (11:55)
I don't remember the foil, unfortunately, but...

wish I could remember what foil I started on. ⁓ I do remember. So was Adam Cook's foil. And yeah, I don't know if you know who he is, but just legendary Red Bull Kiter from back in the day. ⁓ He still has a lot of ⁓ roots here in Maui. And yeah, one of the fastest guys in the race world. was kind of him and Heineken that were battling a bunch for a while there. And

Daniel Paronetto (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (12:31)
Anyways, he had this crazy race foil, I think.

Either Rista was making it or I don't even know who had that foil. But anyways, super high aspect, like almost impossible to ride for a beginner. He's like, just go for it. You'll figure it out. And I jump on this thing and literally just straight up when like best tack of my life still to this day, at least in my mind, you know, and, ⁓ I couldn't get back. went up when, and I couldn't go down with it. So.

Daniel Paronetto (12:47)
You

Nice.

Yeah

It's hard

to do that on the kite foil actually. remember it took me a while to understand how to go downwind on the kite.

Jon McCabe (13:08)
Yeah.

So I kind of like cranked up wind and then just like kept falling to get back down wind. And ⁓ I came in, he's like, what do you think? What do you think? And I'm like, I need a day to think about this, you know? And this is like early, early beginnings of kite foiling, ⁓ I would say. And yeah, it really, I think that night I slept on it and woke up, all I could do is think about that weightless feeling. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (13:39)
Yeah, I think it's so intoxicating once you feel that third axis that you get on the foil that you don't with other board sports or skiing ⁓ for that matter. then once you feel it, you just want to like become a master at it. It just consumes you so quick. After I did my first session on the kite, I literally touched the twin tip twice after that. yeah, I went full beans on it.

Jon McCabe (13:58)
Yes.

wow, yeah

I still have and even to this day I still love the twin tip. ⁓ I can't give it up. There's something about that big air experience on the twin tip. just can't let go but foiling really didn't click for me at that moment. It took time to get on an easier foil and luckily a client I was teaching how to lift foil kind of

Daniel Paronetto (14:14)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (14:33)
one of the first gen ones and while he's out there and I'm running safety, I'm learning how to foil on his gear. ⁓ So that was kind of an awesome way to learn is, you know, making money, I'm getting paid, you know, kind of living the dream in that moment and also learning how to foil. So yeah, that was always kind of my goal with coming here and being in the water sports industry was to be able to ride and

Daniel Paronetto (14:40)
Nice.

Jon McCabe (15:03)
just enjoy life while I'm also helping others get better at things, you know.

Daniel Paronetto (15:05)
Mm-hmm.

And then from kite foiling, what did you progress into? Did you go into prone or did you go into wingings straight away?

Jon McCabe (15:16)
So kite foiling went to ⁓ sup foiling. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (15:22)
yeah. yeah. I actually saw

a photo on your Insta with an Armstrong foil, a double kind of nose board. I don't even know what that was.

Jon McCabe (15:30)
Yeah,

yeah. So Army shows up. I had met Army in New Zealand a long time ago. He was like shooting videos for Ozone, snow kiting. And I was on a trip down there. I don't really remember the exact details, but you know, same energy. If you ever met Army, just this guy's got way too much energy, but same guy, you know, back then as he is today. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (15:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (16:00)
just so excited about life and adventure and everything. And he shows up here and he's got this giant mothership pickle fork subboard. And I'm just like, what is this thing? And then he's got a 1600 super thick volume foil with it. And GoFoil was already developing things similar.

Daniel Paronetto (16:13)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (16:28)
you know, with Kai and all of that. So he was kind of right there with them at the same time in my mind. ⁓ Maybe even earlier, because he was going on these downwind missions on that setup. And I tried it with him out there and it was absolutely miserable. I was like, I don't know how Kai does this downwind thing, but if this isn't working, you know. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (16:41)
Jesus.

Jon McCabe (16:57)
I remember Armie would get up for like a few seconds and you know, just paddle the whole thing back then. And then, you know, we, we all tried and we had kites, we were hooking up to each other just to get up on foil and see how far you could ride it. And that was working a lot better. But at that time I needed the wave energy, like an actually breaking wave to have fun with that. And I found it.

Daniel Paronetto (17:09)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (17:23)
sort of limiting on what size of wave I could actually take off on. So there was that side of it too. But yeah, it was fun to be at the beginning for that and experience that. I did kind of like burn out in a weird way, like where I was like, well, the waves are firing. Like I need to surf. I need to like do other things. And then I'd say between, there was like a

Daniel Paronetto (17:28)
Yeah.

Mmm. Yeah.

Jon McCabe (17:52)
kind of a big gap there where winging wasn't out yet and foils weren't where they need to be yet and boards too. Like everything was kind of fluggish, kind of like, okay, I'm doing it. It's given me that feeling, but I'm not ripping turns. I'm not, ⁓ and there was also like this side of, you know, surf lineups that really did not want it there. So you really had to find the waves and no one's on.

Daniel Paronetto (18:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Jon McCabe (18:21)
And that can be a little challenging too. The last thing I wanted to do is like ruin somebody's experience in the water because I'm out on the giant mothership and, you know, catching waves or whatever. It was kind of a, it was kind of an interesting time, but I kind of set that to the side for a bit. And once the foils, you know, got better, thinner, it was all prone for a while. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (18:31)
You

Right. Yeah.

Jon McCabe (18:51)
Yeah.

And then winging and of course now we got our parowing. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (18:56)
Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I love to hear those stories because when, when I saw the power wing, I kind of knew what to do with it because of that background and kiting and everything, but I didn't know everything that it would open up. what was your first exposure to, power winging?

Jon McCabe (19:17)
⁓ You know the first exposure was definitely Sam on on his pocket wings he Still is way ahead of the game on all of us. I think You know, I'd say a year and a half in front of the pack, right? I Was dropping I guess the the big was like I we all saw what he was doing but we all didn't identify with it for whatever reason and ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (19:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (19:47)
One day he's like, Hey, can you take me up wind? And I take him up wind, drop him at pavilions at that Ho'okepa beach park where I just rode. And, ⁓ I watched him. was like, I'm going to sit around and watch him. Like these waves are kind of pumping. Like I want to see what he's so frothing about. And I actually watch him like, catch this wave way outside, drain it all the way down through point, which is a long way.

Daniel Paronetto (19:59)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (20:14)
kind of get back up wind, hit a couple more and I'm like, huh, I want to do that. Like that looks sick. Cause I wasn't seeing that at like our main beach. Cause he wasn't really able to put it all together on that upwind side at our beach. He would just fly through and we'd be like, okay, yeah. But I guess I wasn't really into the downwind.

Daniel Paronetto (20:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (20:43)
like I am now then. So I wasn't really, I don't know, we just weren't really there yet mentally. And now that, you know, Greg pulls out the bar, everything was like, yeah, this is just like the kite I'm used to. It's just turned 90 degrees, right?

Daniel Paronetto (20:55)
Mmm.

Yeah, it was crazy.

was ⁓ visually a very small tweak. know technically that's a big change, but visually it became accessible for some reason. It's like, it's a little kite, not the tulan.

Jon McCabe (21:13)
Yeah, I think just that

one handed flying and the ease of that because Sam's, I would try on the beach one handed and it just always seemed to like to be spread out a little bit. And it took a lot more finesse, like a little bit of deflection in the handle. And I just wasn't able to put it all together.

Daniel Paronetto (21:17)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Jon McCabe (21:39)
I didn't even really try in the water. I think I tried to order one from him back then and it just never showed up. And I don't know, it was kind of one of those things where it's like, I wanted it to work, but I just couldn't make it work, you know? ⁓ The stars weren't aligned for the pocket wing and me. So my first real experience was on the, the BRM 2.9 and spent a lot of time on that thing. A lot of

Daniel Paronetto (21:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Jon McCabe (22:07)
lot of walks of shame and just trying to force a 40 liter board and yeah, you name it, I've got the story. yeah, was a journey and now we've got way better equipment to kind of enjoy and yeah, I just.

Daniel Paronetto (22:16)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

What were

you, what did you, ⁓ get on first board wise and foil wise? Do you remember your first couple of sessions? What gear you were writing?

Jon McCabe (22:37)
Yeah, so

I went straight for the winging board. It's a 40 liter, five ⁓ KT. ⁓ Yeah. And it would work above 30 knots or 30 miles per hour. think that, know, so I, I, took me like a week just to learn that. Like don't try unless the gust is hitting 30, right? ⁓ but that was a week of, of ⁓ walks of shame and, and forcing it where I was like, man, if I just get up, if I can just get up like,

Daniel Paronetto (22:41)
Yeah. That's tough.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (23:06)
it's on, you know? So I was already, my first or second, I think my second session was like pure success, where I was like doing wave laps, packing it down, sort I mean, probably having problems with that, but like still doing it. So it was like all I wanted to do for the rest of that week, except the wind just wasn't enough for that setup. And I think it was probably a six or 700 front wing.

Daniel Paronetto (23:08)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Hehehe.

Jon McCabe (23:36)
I slowly started moving that foil up to the thousand zone, which is when I call it, Gregging. when you ride the, when you, yeah, when you ride the thousand or, you know, I'm sure even bigger, ⁓ that's when you're Gregging, you know, it's, you're not out there to like shred these super hard turns. You're out there to just enjoy life, you know, cruise, you know, try new things like,

Daniel Paronetto (23:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's just on the same foil all the time, isn't he?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (24:04)
I don't know, I actually have found so much happiness in that, you know, thousand range lately just because it's like, makes life easier, right? So why force it? And the pumping game just turns on too. So that's kind of cool. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (24:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

what was the hardest thing for you to understand about the parawing when you started?

Jon McCabe (24:30)
⁓ hardest thing. I would just say getting to a level of, you know, high success on the stowing and throwing out. I mean, you can't really have enough practice on that and even just kind of taking some time off on it this summer where you're only doing it maybe once or twice on a downwinder to now we've got.

waves today was waves. So there were some, you know, some things to be worked out a bit, some kinks that I'm like, I'm kind of making some, some bad mistakes on this stowing. So yeah, you know, like the knowledge is there, but if you don't use it, it's, it's not going to be, ⁓ it's, it's, it's not going to work. Right. So I think there's, ⁓ a routine that has to be kind of

Daniel Paronetto (25:02)
Yeah.

Jon McCabe (25:25)
programmed in your brain and with your hands and everything. So until you get a lot of reps at that, you're not going to have it. And same with that BRM, which I will to their credit, you can be pretty sloppy with that routine and get away with it more. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (25:34)
Mm-hmm.

probably

the only one you could do that because it is the one that has the shortest lines, the best kind of fabric to actually pack it down. So I agree. Like you get away with a lot on the, on the BRM that you wouldn't on like the ozone just because of how it's built really. Yeah. That leading edge profile being so small, like all of those things, right?

Jon McCabe (25:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly,

Yeah, I feel like I was just like manhandling that thing and just stuffing it into whatever and just pulling it out. I think that was part of the enjoyment of that phase, you know. And then the transition from that into the ozone wing, which you get a lot more performance out of, has been amazing. I can't go back.

Daniel Paronetto (26:13)
Mmm.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (26:34)
Every time I try, I'm like, whoa, how did I have so much fun on this thing? You know, but it's, it's, ⁓ when the wind's just right for it, maybe, maybe there is a place for it, but it's hard to hit that perfect wind. ⁓ Maui, get a lot of variable conditions where the wind's way up or down or gusty or this or that. And, know, you really need a wing that can perform in that. So, when you get that perfect day, there's, it's hard to ignore that.

Daniel Paronetto (26:38)
Yeah.

Jon McCabe (27:04)
that wing and you know, it's kind of interesting. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (27:08)
Yeah.

And look, I love to talk about gear because I think you've experienced, you know, probably the best pair of wings out there. You've, you've touched, ⁓ and used and got a feel for them. And there's so many things that we can talk about pair wings and performance. And what do you think kind of attracts you to the style of wing that Ozone put out? What about it is really like, I can't live without this now.

Jon McCabe (27:37)
It's really quiet. I think that was the first thing that hit me was like, wow, it's so quiet. And it really brings you more into the foil, more into the elements. ⁓ It allows a lot of deep power too, which is huge. mean, we all talk about it and it seems like if you don't have that now, you're not really making a pair of wing that people want.

Daniel Paronetto (27:56)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (28:06)
I think there's more room for improvement on that on all the brands, but it's definitely a huge, huge game changer to be able to crank up wind and kill some power. ⁓ And then just how fluid everything is with the bar, with being hooked in. I do a lot of hooked in riding, so it really just feels super balanced on that side to me.

Daniel Paronetto (28:29)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (28:35)
And yeah, I've been experimenting with all the other brands. ⁓ I just got to ride the F1 frigate not too long ago. And I've got to ride, ⁓ obviously, the new BRMs right when they came out, the V2s. I tried the Paella on the beach. And yeah, I couldn't get behind that. But there's all kinds of ⁓ innovation, which if you could take a little bit out of each brand,

Daniel Paronetto (28:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (29:04)
I feel like we would have that perfect pair of wing that we're all searching for. But right now it's hard to get that feeling from any of the others. I've spent the most time on the ozone, so that's kind of why I'm drawn to it as well. If I spent the most time on any of the other ones, I'm sure I would learn to love them and maybe the ozone doesn't feel the best because I'm just so used to that other one, right?

Daniel Paronetto (29:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (29:32)
I know a lot of people have trouble with the lines on their zone and I'm like, what are you talking about? Those are the nicest lines. I've never, my hands are never chafed. Like it's so smooth climbing up and grabbing them. And yeah, I think the whole line thing is really interesting because like I spent a long time on those other lines and when I go back to them, I have a hard time.

Daniel Paronetto (29:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (29:59)
It's all in what you use and what you're used to. There's not really a right or wrong yet. ⁓ everyone thinks they know because they have experience on something specific, right? But no one really knows. We're all just having fun and guessing and thinking that we know because we have experience. yeah, I think that's why I love it so much is everyone's trying everything. It's super innovative. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (30:05)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (30:25)
something that works for this guy is not going to work for that guy, you know, and it's like, I got this figured out. I'll show somebody something like, this is definitely the way, this is the only way. And then they come around and they do it a different way. And I'm like, well, that's your way, you know, and we're both right. So yeah, it's just a cool time to be in the sport.

Daniel Paronetto (30:40)
Yep.

Yeah, I like, I like what you're talking about. like the wing that you ride the most becomes, you know, the one that you kind of prefer. I've been on the BRMs now, the V2s for a little while. And every time I get something else, I try to pack it down. I'm like, my God, like the stowability, ⁓ just became such an important factor for me that I can stow that pair of wing in like five seconds now, which is pretty important to what the style of riding that I want to do.

So then when I go on the ozone, I do feel the longer lines kind of impeding that sometimes, you know, that there's a little tangle that it's hard to get out of. ⁓ but in saying that there's a lot of things that we can do to make them better. ⁓ and I'm curious to know like what kind of little tweaks or alterations have you done to your parawing to, get it closer to how you want it to perform.

Jon McCabe (31:41)
on that three meter pocket rocket the first one I ever got I was probably the first one out of the gates I know I was it just chopped the lines and I pretty much

Daniel Paronetto (31:51)
So everybody chopped the

lines in Maui, didn't they? Like was a chop shop kind of event.

Jon McCabe (31:54)
Yeah, I kind of,

kind of leaded the force on that one. I just, I had a couple of sessions and it's like we were saying where, ⁓ you know, I'm just so used to that VRM and how easy it was to just, you know, the V1 specifically, how easy it was to stow and, ⁓ the line length too. was just so used to that combo that anything that wasn't that I couldn't get behind.

Daniel Paronetto (32:08)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (32:25)
And now I've kind of made it a point not to chop any of the other sizes. ⁓ I'm lucky in Maui that I, you know, the 2.4 is my go-to and it's probably the best parawing ever in my mind. Like I can't think of a better, I don't know if you've gotten to use the 2.4 pocket rocket, but it's just unbelievably good. And it hits all the marks for.

Daniel Paronetto (32:38)
Mm-hmm.

You know, I mean,

any small parawing is amazing, isn't it? The smaller you go, it doesn't even have to be that good. It's just like, it's so small, it's so nice. I've used a pocket, the three meter a lot, but it's not mine. So I didn't chop any lines or anything like that. Are the lines on the two, four, two, four, two, five? Two, four, a little smaller or they come stock like the three?

Jon McCabe (32:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

So a little smaller. would, you know, if I had my perfect length, it would be like a few inches off, but it's really close. And because it's a smaller wing, having that little bit of length and low end is nice when you need it. Like even today, when I was out on it, I was like, kind of glad I have that just extra three inches or whatever it was. Um, I've also like hooked up this harness line in a way where it's like, gives me even more length.

Daniel Paronetto (33:18)
Okay, cool.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (33:46)
So I'm using the harness line a lot to hold with one hand and get the wing further away from me just to get out of lower winds or holes of wind. And it's really working well. ⁓ But yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (33:52)
Mm-hmm.

Is it one attachment

point on the bar or two? Okay.

Jon McCabe (34:03)
Two attachment points. ⁓

It's actually like the center line for a kite bar. ⁓ And you may have seen other people that have done it. But yeah, I tried to share that right out of the gates with everybody on the ozone team. Just like, this is it. This is the... And they have like the single attachment point ones, which are great too for a lot of people. ⁓ But I'm still loyal to my original two attachment point.

Daniel Paronetto (34:32)
very close to what you're used to with the kite.

Jon McCabe (34:32)
It's really stiff.

Yeah, it's really stiff. And I don't know, I love being able to hold it and fly the kite well off of it.

Daniel Paronetto (34:43)
⁓ So how long did you end up putting your lines from the A lines, I measured them through the A lines just to get an idea of how long they are.

Jon McCabe (34:57)
Yeah, it was was right around that nine inch, 10 inch mark on the on the but you know, if you look at the BRM website, they have retract length and pretty much just matched it perfect to that V1 2.9. ⁓ But now knowing what I did and seeing all the guys on these forums and how they're doing it, I'm like, there's actually a better way to do that without chopping your bridle lines. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (35:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, gotcha.

What

are they doing?

Jon McCabe (35:26)
But I literally

just did a straight chop and tied a big knot and then larks headed to the knot. Like the fastest, get me out there. I don't have time for this. Cynbad took it to like, or Kenny, think, both of them took it to another level. They did a nice slice and proper kite line. ⁓ And then, yeah, so the other way is you basically mark the lines where you want it.

Daniel Paronetto (35:45)
Yeah.

Jon McCabe (35:56)
you can do a really unique knot that some guy came up with ⁓ that goes through those little leader lines and then do a really clean wrap job from there. There's a couple different ones floating. Some are way better than others though. I saved all the pictures. I got to do it maybe to my bigger sizes because I want to wave ride with them. But at the same time, like

Daniel Paronetto (36:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (36:22)
I really just figured out how to manage the longer lines, which has been a journey. It's definitely a journey. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (36:25)
Hmm.

It would have been man, because

it, well, that's something that we never got to do in any other sport. mean, you know, sinker starts are hard on the parrying shore, but you know, you probably did a hundred of them on the, on the wing before. So it's just a matter of finding how it works on the parrying. Like packing down a kite while riding we've never done before. So what did you find?

⁓ helped you manage those longer lines. Cause I'm a lot of people, they, know, we talk about power winging and we're talking about two, three meter power wings, but I don't know. think 50, 60 % of the people out there, they're on four meter power wings because they're not riding in 30 knots. So what's a tip to, manage those, those lines a little bit better.

Jon McCabe (37:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I, you know, last few months since the pocket, I've really gotten to play with all these sizes that I didn't really even get to before. just had the one 2.9 for a long time and then the three ozone for awhile. ⁓ so I'm just starting to really dive into all that for the Amoa race. I was on a five meter. ⁓ yeah. So it's unbelievably stable and,

Daniel Paronetto (37:30)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (37:44)
fun to ride even in crazy wind. So, you know, good job on Ozone side for that one. But the line length is insanely long, right? So how do you manage that? It's a process, right? It's a learning process. You really have to be clean with every movement you do with the lines. can't get ⁓ ahead of yourself. You really have to be methodical. You really have to

Daniel Paronetto (38:11)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (38:13)
make sure everything's going where it needs to go. And it's kind of a multi-step process on that five meter, but it is very achievable, ⁓ which yeah, I do a lot now, but it's not ideal for pure wave laps. There's no doubt about it, especially smaller, shorter wave, ⁓ but for downwinder, totally manageable. feel like my lines could be

Daniel Paronetto (38:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jon McCabe (38:43)
crazy long at this point and I'll figure out how to do it. ⁓ So yeah, it's just spending the time with them, I think more than anything. ⁓ you know, the frustrations are usually from people that have tried it once or twice. They didn't really commit and you truly do need to commit to whatever product it is. Like there's no right or wrong one. There's no, we're all just

Daniel Paronetto (39:04)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (39:12)
having fun and you know as long as there's a smile on your face when you're done, like that's really all that matters. ⁓ but yeah with the Ozon specifically like there's a lot of guys struggling on a lot of other brands and they throw the, we give them the Ozon and they're straight up win and we're like, hmm, that's definitely, ⁓ that's a unique thing. There's something with that beginner that

Daniel Paronetto (39:18)
Tangle or no tangle if the smile's there

Jon McCabe (39:41)
Or even intermediate, like strong wing foilers that just can't get it to click on other brands and then they throw the ozone in and they're really doing well. ⁓ But yeah, maybe they don't have that stowing side on the ozone. So that's their next learning curve from there. ⁓ But they're getting where they want to go. And I think that's more important than how well you can stow it and throw it back out.

Daniel Paronetto (40:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. And

I think the stowing comes with a little bit more experience in the sport. think when we begin, you know, we get that little tunnel vision vibe when we're stowing, we don't see much. Everything is like very close and it's just a blur everywhere and you're just trying to manage these lines. But one thing that I found helpful is every time I put the pair wing down, I'm packing it down the same way.

If I'm coming back from a session, if I'm putting it into, you know, the travel bag or whatever, it, it always packs down the same way. And I kind of split it into three components and then everybody can take that and try different things. But one is like, grab your leading edge. You need to be able to grab your leading edge. Number two is, ⁓ know where your bar is and isolate the bar and lines. You need to be able to break those apart a little bit. And then the third component.

is the line management, which you were talking about. ⁓ and there are so many ways to do it, but if you think about it that way, you know, three elements to make the stowing the best it can be is just to be able to identify leading edge bar in line separately. ⁓ and, then just take your time with it on a wave scenario. I think it's a lot harder. You need to have the proper gear, maybe shorter lines. And then those things come into play a little bit, but on a downwinder.

If you know how to downwind, take your time with it, right? You don't have to stow in 10 seconds. You can stow in three minutes. When you feel the energy, you're comfortable, you know what's happening. You do one step at a time. And I guarantee you, you're going to be stowing that thing neatly, you know, if you just take your time and then you have, you know, 10 miles or whatever to, to ride and it doesn't, you know, you're going to lose three minutes of it. fine.

Jon McCabe (41:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I you know, I really try to push everyone into bigger foils too just to give them more time on foil once they do collapse the wing, right? mean, time is your is your best friend with foiling and you know, the more time on foil the better. it's if you're not using the wind power, you really need to be on bigger foils to enjoy it and

especially on the beginning phase. I'm still having just so much fun on bigger foils lately. So today was an exception because we had true waves. yeah, it's something to keep in mind. There's a happiness factor that we always need to touch base on with. And what's going to make me the happiest? It's to get a nice, clean stove, to just have a good, enjoyable experience. And yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (42:47)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (42:53)
That's that's Gregging right there. You know, he's really mastered it. I was a big holdout at the beginning. I'm not going to lie, but I was also just sitting out there getting, you know, just barely trickling downwind while they're they're just doing laps around me at the start. And I was just stoked to be out there with the guys at the beginning and just being a part of it. And then, you know, it all started clicking from there.

Daniel Paronetto (42:55)
It is.

Yep.

Yeah, that feeling of a relaunch as well and redeploy is amazing. You know, you ride a wave and then you just chuck this thing and then you're like, you're, you're going upwind again. You're like, my God, that that's the perfect lap. And then you're like, I just want to do that forever. Really.

Jon McCabe (43:34)
Yeah, still to this day, I I think over a year now, and it's still the most addicting thing. even when other things are working here, like, I still prefer the para wing, and it's really unique in that way. It's like, I don't know what it is. It's a truer connection to the wind, I think, and this ability just to shift into ⁓ other modes where you're not using the wind as well.

Daniel Paronetto (43:48)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Jon McCabe (44:04)
Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (44:06)
You mentioned, ⁓ before we started recording that even though power winging is bringing you a lot of joy on the water, you still haven't felt the same flow state that you felt in different sports, ⁓ like kiting and snow kiting where things are just happening, you know, and you're not thinking about it and you're just going, what, what's, what do you feel is missing for you to feel that with the pair wing? Because that's huge. Like you're loving it so much, but you haven't.

gotten to where you want to get to yet.

Jon McCabe (44:37)
Yeah, you know, I think there's this, ⁓ visual visualization you have of, of how you want to ride, who you want to be when you're in these critical moments, right? And, ⁓ with snow kiting, it, it was kind of easy. You just go up the biggest steepest mountain and you literally just commit. You fly off that thing and your brain goes into some sort of survival mode, even though it's like,

Relatively cruise, it's just this thing like, okay, well, I gotta just clear my mind, stay in the moment, figure this out, right? ⁓ So that one, I'll always love for that. Like it's such a simple way to get to that flow state mindset where you literally are on like a life or death situation. So it comes naturally in that sport for me in big mountains. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (45:23)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (45:36)
So then in the kite boarding, same thing, kite surfing, I should say, it's usually in big wave scenarios. You just put yourself in the deepest craziest section of a wave and you work your way out of it, you know? ⁓ So those two, I just have so much confidence in the kite, I guess. I've spent a lot of time flying kites. So it always gives me the superpower and feeling that, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm in it. Winging, I just...

happened to be right place, right time, ⁓ right wave, and just perfectly flowing and just a pure session of flow state. So I've been lucky to hit that and, you know, same with toe foiling and, and I don't know if I've really hit it in the prone world. And I think that's why I haven't hit it in the parawing world. There's a lot of similarities between those two. And

Daniel Paronetto (46:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (46:36)
That's what I love about it is it's helped me become a much better prone foiler. It's incredible how much better I am now at reading waves, connecting waves, taking off on waves because I've been putting myself in situations where the parawing doesn't work anymore. And your only choice is to stuff it in your bag or whatever you're using and figure out.

Daniel Paronetto (46:42)
100%.

Hehehe

Jon McCabe (47:05)
how to prone into this wave or this situation that you're in. That's really what I love about it. But I guess back to the flow state, I just haven't quite hit the marks on how I want to ride once I've had that, once I have it all packed up. I really want to find this just ripping mentality. And I think part of it's because I'm using a mid-lang.

⁓ you know, 55 liter board, little longer than what I prefer for just carving super critical turns, but it's still a small board in the parawing world. So I'm like playing with that. And, you know, I think also it's just being in the right place at the right time, which maybe I just haven't been there yet with the parawing. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (47:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, I think it's curious because I don't know if it's a gear kind of limitation still, or is it that we just have to get better and we need to be in a critical position and we haven't put ourselves in that critical position yet because I think wave riding is. Underexplored on the pair of wings still, ⁓ you know, down-winding everybody, you know, is kind of clicking with it and it has it's obvious kind of, ⁓ just.

It's just better for obvious reasons. but wave riding is hard, man. Wave riding, you know, catching a wave and stowing the power wing quickly enough to perform where you have to perform on a wave. It's tricky. It's very, you know, condition dependent, spot dependent. We might not have found that perfect kind of spot and you know, day, guess.

Jon McCabe (48:51)
Yeah, I mean, even today was pretty perfect at Ho'okipa. I'm still just so stoked to get a good session there. And it's a very humbling place. Any little mistake you make there, your gear could potentially be on the rocks. The parawing could be a nightmare. You'd probably just ditch it completely, come back for it once the waves sorted out. Just getting in and out of the water there is kind of a nightmare with a foil.

Daniel Paronetto (49:02)
yeah.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (49:20)
⁓ you know, the, kids like cash and, and Liam and Andrea and, ⁓ I mean, we got so many kid rippers, Marley, all these kids can just make it look effortless, coming in and going out. ⁓ but I think there's a part of that just growing up near the ocean and living it from day one and, ⁓ and also just also being at that age, that, that perfect age that.

Daniel Paronetto (49:44)
not be intimidated by it, Yeah.

Jon McCabe (49:49)
is pure adrenaline, pure like just ready to go, ready to send it any which way and likely pull it off, which is always cool for all of us to see. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (49:56)
You

Tell us

a little bit about that session, man. Cause I don't know if a lot of people even understand, you know, what a wave writing session in who Kipa looks like. Cause that's, it's no small feat there just to get out there and back in, in one piece.

Jon McCabe (50:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean still relatively small day like but for anybody else around the world standards, it's you know, well overhead it's It's pumping for for everywhere else in the world for us. It's like are those even waves but um Just because it gets huge out there. Um, but it's the probably the most seen Wind surfing wave spot in the world, I would say definitely one of the top two or three and

Daniel Paronetto (50:28)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (50:48)
Kiting as well, like Oli Jessy's, some of his best stuff is right on this wave at the point. ⁓ Besides Jaws, of course, that's a whole nother game, but it's the best spot, I would say, best wave, critical sections. You really need to know the wave. So it's kind of back to what we were saying is like, yeah, the wave and knowledge of that wave really comes into play with ⁓ surfing.

Daniel Paronetto (50:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (51:18)
That's what I enjoy a lot. think there's a lot to be said there with just knowing the reef, knowing where you can hit a wave, where you have to go fast, where you have to slow down, where it barrels, where it does different things. And this wave has all of that and it's got outside takeoffs. It's got lefts, it's got rights. There's all kinds of names. Even though it's one spot, there's like, I could think of 15 different names that people call different takeoffs there. And, ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (51:36)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (51:47)
There's some shelves that you just can't get caught with a foil at. There's all kinds of stuff. But ⁓ yeah, to have a clean experience out there. just every time I go back out, connecting into a really nice wave, ⁓ getting good backdowns, getting good ⁓ redeploys, on my favorite wing.

on a smaller foil. It just had all the elements to a good time. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (52:18)
That sounds so

sick, man. mean, I don't know how you don't get into that flow state with those conditions because if you throw me in a wave like that, I will just like erase everything from my head in a second.

Jon McCabe (52:30)
So there,

mean, it's a high level of enjoyment for me, but I think I really want to take my personal riding to the next level there. you know, I know if Jesse or somebody out there was out there pushing me, I would, but I need that like, ⁓ Jesse just did that. I got to step it up. You know, I need that ⁓ kind of camaraderie or whatever it is to really push it.

Daniel Paronetto (52:55)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (52:59)
⁓ Today, all I'm thinking is, okay, winter is not really even here yet. You got waves, like just take it easy, have a good experience. I think it's myself holding back a bit to have just a clean experience. ⁓ Yeah, clean run or whatever you want to call it. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (53:10)
Mm-hmm.

What

kind of gear do you ride in those conditions? I mean, how, like how, how hard is it blowing and what kind of you are on your 50 liter mid length on those conditions? 55. Yeah.

Jon McCabe (53:27)
55 liter, yeah, it's like a,

it's a Unifoil Quiver Killer kind of great board. ⁓ Nothing fancy, but they just got the balance and shape right on that one. So I've been really happy with that. Really easy to prone paddle it as well. So that's kind of my most important thing for a good parawing board is how well can I catch a wave with it? Just me and and me and

Daniel Paronetto (53:31)
⁓ yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (53:56)
a wave. And that one just seems to be the easiest out of everything I've tried. So that's kind of step one for me just for that safety and comfort to know I can foil back home. ⁓ Foils, I play with everything and anything. I've got this amazing Axis foil right now that's super unique. They let me use it in that Amua race. I've got ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (54:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (54:25)
a lot of unifoil evolutions and progressions and I still like the vipers, you know, I like all the shapes, all the sizes. I've got them all. I'm kind of a foil whore or whatever you want to call it. Like I try everything and anything. I love experiencing new foils. Like I got an F1 momentum. It's been a hard one to get behind, but I'm starting to really figure it all out now. And it's,

Daniel Paronetto (54:32)
Yeah, right.

Hehehe.

Jon McCabe (54:55)
super enjoyable as well. anything that's new, cutting edge, I want to be the first one trying it. I just enjoy that experience. So yeah, I I couldn't even tell you how many foils that I have right now, but the one I wrote today was a 115 Evolution. ⁓ It just does everything that I needed in those conditions today.

Daniel Paronetto (55:11)
You

Jon McCabe (55:23)
If it was any bigger, I'd be looking at smaller foils, though.

Daniel Paronetto (55:27)
Yeah. Yeah. I found, I mean, you were talking about upscaling your front wing, ⁓ for power winging in general. ⁓ not necessarily riding waves at who keep her, but I think that that's something that I've done as well. I'm pretty much on the eight 50 S and nine ADS from code 95 % of the time. And what I'm finding is working for me is really going extra small on the fuse. So the smallest fuselage that I can put my hands on.

⁓ and really small tail and mast. just write the 80 mast. don't write anything else. I just have that mast and I'm compensating a lot, you know, the, the speed that I get from these bigger foils with that smaller fuse. And I guess the code foils, they're pretty thick, ⁓ you know, connections and stuff. So the fuse made so much difference in my speed, like ridiculous turning obviously helps as well. But without any compromise on the pitch stability, it was absolutely a game changer for me. Have you.

try different things in terms of like your foil setup that's been working for you in para winging.

Jon McCabe (56:32)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm constantly trying everything and anything, any new tail, any shim, any mash him. There's always something to tweak here and there and learn from. But yeah, I like where you're at. Like I tend to be in that same zone where you kind of take in a little bigger foil than maybe what you'd wing or, ⁓ you know, want in a bigger wave situation. But then you

short in the fuse, you make a smaller tail. So you still get that low end to get you up. and, but then you also get a lot of pump ability. You get that surfy feel from the tail, the shorter fuse. Yeah. I I'm kind of in that same zone. probably 90 % of the time today was a little, little different. I purposely went smaller and stable. went like, ⁓ yeah, I went to a different.

place because I know that wave and it's but I'm still not on the foil for that wave today like I need to go lower aspect and smaller and I will it's just yeah and that's when I might hit that flow state.

Daniel Paronetto (57:31)
Mm.

And when you think about downsizing that front wing for performance, do you feel like you would maybe have a little bit of a longer fuse to maybe get that stability back or you're not thinking about it?

Jon McCabe (57:58)
Yeah,

yeah, no, I mean, I think so. think so. ⁓ when I go lower aspect, I tend to like a little bit more length on the fuse. ⁓ Not too long, just like your standard medium length probably. But yeah, I've just each foil has its own things that you're trying to get out of it. And that's really what I've taken from Unifoil is

Daniel Paronetto (58:09)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (58:26)
all the little shims, all the little different ⁓ fuses and they really allow you to make any front wing adaptable. And I really like that. I enjoy that tinkering. I think it's not for everybody. Like obviously a lot of brands like my F1 Momentum or Lyft or whatever, you you just put it together. It works great. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (58:37)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (58:55)
I love that too. I guess at the end of the day, I like it all.

Daniel Paronetto (58:59)
Yeah,

just a frother.

Jon McCabe (59:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If it's new and it does something really cool or makes you better, I want to try it though. Like that's the bottom line. Anything that makes me better ⁓ at something that is a goal of mine, I'm into it. So I'll usually buy it. It's that simple to me. If I feel like I'm just doing the same stuff on just a different feeling thing, maybe not that exciting about it, you know?

Daniel Paronetto (59:25)
Mm.

Let's

talk about gear, man, because like what you're saying, it opens up so much because I think we haven't really reached the point in powering in where we have all the gear that we want ⁓ the way we want it. And I'm thinking bar stash belts. You were mentioning dry bags as well before the show. So what do you feel we still need to crack or we need to create?

Jon McCabe (59:55)
⁓ So I mean, just from today's session, it was very obvious, even though it on has made the best stash belt hands down, ⁓ is very obvious that having that wing in that belt in like the shore break, just getting in ⁓ out of the water was was a hindrance. And you know, you can never really have it to pack down. You can never really have it like.

Daniel Paronetto (1:00:15)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:00:24)
Any kind of ball of water that's attached to you is not good, right? So, and that's kind of what happens with pretty much all the stash bilge right now is that they're kind of a hindrance when they're super wet, right? ⁓ So this spot, just to get out of the water, like you don't want anything that flying in the air. You want all hands on deck, like ready for anything to hit you at any moment. Otherwise you're going to get pancaked on a rocky shelf and.

Worked on a shore break and yeah, it's ⁓ luckily there's lifeguards there But I'm lucky to never have to use them too, right? But even today was a little Challenging the stash belt was kind of holding me back a bit in that moment just to try and scrape in If I was cash for example, I would just fly in

Daniel Paronetto (1:00:59)
Hehehe

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:01:18)
kind of hit the beach and jump off and be that all-star. I think that comes at a cost to your foil for sure, because if you hit that shelf, which it's inevitable, you're going to pay the price in your foil for sure. So if you get the gear for free, you kind of think of things a little differently. But after my experience, I'm like, I'm ready just to hit that shore next time and just send it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:01:28)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:01:47)
⁓ If my foil gets dinged, that's a good thing. I'm using it, right? ⁓ So, yeah, I kind of went on a sidetrack there. Where were we on that? yeah, yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:02:00)
Yeah, you were talking about the stash belt. I, I, I

totally agree with the belts in general. Once you have the parawing in there, it's kind of okay. But once you take them out, you know, they, they get really loose on the body just because the parawing is keeping, you know, the belt kind of tight. What, what do you have in your mind to kind of improve that?

Jon McCabe (1:02:20)
So I'm pretty much always taking two pair of wings now. That's kind of been just something I've been playing with and the more I do it, the more I feel just another level of comfort out there. ⁓ So I'm always using a ⁓ backpack, basically a really small backpack to stuff an extra wing into. Haven't really needed it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:02:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:02:48)
too much, like maybe one time on a downwind or but like, it's, I've definitely given it out a bunch to other people. And I like being that guy. I want to save people. want to help people. I, you know, I don't want people struggling whether they're doing whatever. It's like, yeah, let's all just work together to have fun. Right. ⁓ so yeah, anybody that's at that level that can do that should, because it's just bringing more, ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:02:55)
Right, interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:03:18)
positivity to parawinging and showing everybody the light, right? If it's a sub paddler that's defeated, give them a parawing to get them home. If their paddle breaks, whatever, know, like get them, get them stoked. Yeah. Everybody's out there looking out for each other is the way I look at it. And I think that's just kind of a good mindset, but back to the equipment side, I think it's a backpack. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:03:30)
It's a buddy system. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:03:47)
think it's integrated with a harness. Ride engines kind of got something that works. Kenny rides with it a bunch. He likes it. I haven't found what he's found with it, but I've also not played with it enough. ⁓ But I do like that there's a backpack integrated. I like that there's a harness integrated. I want the harness connection to be a little lower.

Daniel Paronetto (1:03:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Jon McCabe (1:04:17)
the chest thing, I just haven't felt that much comfort in yet, but maybe I will. I, maybe it's just my kiting background is too, too much into that like waste zone. ⁓ but yeah, well, that's still to be determined there, but I find the one issue though is you do need to be able to do that shift, right? Where your, your harness is out.

Daniel Paronetto (1:04:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:04:44)
and then your pouch is out or whatever, you know? So what is input out is really good. It's just if you have the wing in it and you go under water, it becomes an issue. So how we solve that is to be determined, right? And it may be. Yeah. And maybe you just don't. Yeah, I don't know. But someone's going to figure it out. We got a lot of smart guys in the.

Daniel Paronetto (1:04:48)
Yeah.

That's a tough one, man.

Jon McCabe (1:05:15)
in the forums working on all these little things and I know I do have a dry bag that I'm really liking on my back that is really small fits everything I need for downwind runs. ⁓ That's what I'm liking right now. But it can be better, like everything can be more integrated with itself. And yeah, I think that's what I want to see.

Daniel Paronetto (1:05:16)
You

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:05:44)
Yeah, any brand try to try to take some tips and let's let's get this thing going. You know, it's obvious to me that this is the future. This sport is just everybody I've, you know, gotten on parowings is just so thankful. And I love that. You know, it's like I feel like I'm changing their lives, you know, and, I kind of went through this. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:06:00)
Mm-hmm.

And you are, dude. It's true.

Jon McCabe (1:06:10)
In a small way, but yeah, anything that brings people happiness ⁓ in the water, especially it just you're going to be better people at life too. They're going to share that stoke. ⁓ yeah, you know, share, share your pair of wings. That's kind of what I'm putting out there, you know. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:06:27)
100%.

As soon as I see

someone on the beach and they're kind of looking at me and then they look twice, I'm like, come here, man, put your hands on one and just get a few for it. And, know, it doesn't take them too long to get into the water.

Jon McCabe (1:06:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

And to, kiting is like detrimental. Lines have been a scary thing for a lot of people. And I've maybe had one parawing mare, if you want to call it that, um, where like, it's all just like wrapped up in the foil lines everywhere, you know, just like blowing 40 every time I flipped the board up, it's just wanting to hammered back down at me. Um,

Daniel Paronetto (1:06:45)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Let's hear it.

shit.

Yes.

Jon McCabe (1:07:09)
I'm getting, I'm drifting towards this like point of just being dry docked on a reef. And, you know, there's just so many things. then it all started because of this. It all started because it's like this, this race time, right? When, race time happens, everything ⁓ experimental starts happening. You know, it's like,

what is the biggest parrot wing I can take? What is the smallest foil I can take? Where's the limit on this? You wanna find that and then pull it back a little bit, right? That's kind of the way I've learned everything is find the limits and then take a step back, right? ⁓ So that was part of it. It was a unique day. The wind was a little more onshore and I was taking a four, but it was the windiest.

Daniel Paronetto (1:07:40)
Hmm ⁓

Jon McCabe (1:08:05)
most powerful, powering experience in my life.

Daniel Paronetto (1:08:09)
A four and how many knots?

Jon McCabe (1:08:12)
⁓ I mean, we're touching 40s for sure. We're in the 40s. So it's, you know, sandblasting on the beach. And the unique thing that day was the wind was a little more on shore. So instead of hitting that, you know, more downwind angle, I'm actually like scratching this more broad reach angle and I have to clear the reef.

Daniel Paronetto (1:08:16)
That's so lit.

Mm.

Jon McCabe (1:08:39)
here if you don't clear the reef you take an inside track that's pretty dicey and there's there's things you might hit especially on the low tide which it was there was just a lot of things that all like came at me at once and i'm like ⁓ man but you know the beauty is if you don't overreact you just slowly work through it you know it all came together ended up being one of my fastest runs ever and

Daniel Paronetto (1:08:46)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:09:08)
I learned a lot from that experience. You can take lot of positivity from even the worst experiences, especially when you don't get hurt. That's the big one, right?

Daniel Paronetto (1:09:19)
Yeah, I, I, I like what you said there about in all that chaos, ⁓ that sometimes you find yourself in, you can be calm. You could just stop, just stop doing everything. Just look around and, know, just take that 10 seconds just to, you know, center yourself and then just work, you know, one thing at a time. And hopefully everything works out. But you mentioned that this was, ⁓ was it in preparation for the paddle Amur race?

Jon McCabe (1:09:48)
think so, yeah. I don't know if I was truly committed to parawinging then on the races, ⁓ but I was sampling, right? I still have that wing racing background in my mind that I can, know, that's kind of where the most competition is on who can go the fastest. But I hadn't been winging. Like once I got my para-wing,

Daniel Paronetto (1:09:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:10:17)
bug. It's hard to go back to the wing for me. ⁓ I've got this brand new Alula wing, like the best thing that's ever come out and haven't even touched it yet. It just sits in the bag still in the plastic. I know it's going to come out. I know it's going to come out with the waves for sure. There's no doubt about it, but I also just want to be

Daniel Paronetto (1:10:33)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:10:44)
I have so much progression and things I want to do with the parawing. it's, whereas the wing, I'm already at the level I want to be. And for me, it's just wave riding and with small foils, small boards. ⁓ with the parawing, there's a whole plethora of options, right? What am I doing today? My wave lap? Am I doing this? Am I down-winding? Like all of them work today. And,

Daniel Paronetto (1:10:57)
Nice.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:11:12)
I was like, no, you're going to go to the closest place to your house. You're going to get a session, get stoked on parowing and then come talk to Dan. and you know, it's, ⁓ and yeah, I just, I love the wave riding. I always have for me. That's probably the most fun more so than downwindings still. ⁓ the cool thing with the downwinding that kind of got unlocked this year for me was just the longest.

Daniel Paronetto (1:11:20)
Nice.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:11:41)
wave of my life, right? It's multiple waves, but it feels just like this endless wave at a certain point, right? Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:11:43)
Mm-hmm.

If you're not pumping, does absolutely. You're

just linking. And I kind of have that feeling of a one long ride. If you can make it like with the minimal amount of pumping and just turns and connecting it with turns.

Jon McCabe (1:12:00)
Yeah.

So I didn't have the sub foil downwind experience when I committed to my downwind journey. And it's a lot harder than I thought to read the water right and to understand it. And all these top guys have given me little tidbits of advice and I'm out there thinking about them. Like, what is that guy think? What is he telling me? This isn't working or, ⁓ yeah, this is working. you know.

Daniel Paronetto (1:12:07)
Mmm.

⁓ 100%.

Jon McCabe (1:12:32)
Then it's like, well, maybe it's just the conditions. Maybe it's the foil. Maybe it's, you know, this and that, but it's really your ability to read the bumps, stay in the right sections. ⁓ everybody told me to stay high, stay high on these bumps. And lately I've been staying low and having a blast. I don't know what the writer wrong way is, but it's, it's like, what, what's keeping you from pumping and what's keeping you fast and having fun. Right. So.

Daniel Paronetto (1:12:53)
You

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:13:01)
⁓ Yeah, it's been.

Daniel Paronetto (1:13:03)
Well, if you look at, you know, the,

if you look at like the person who I think is the reference, like Kane, just being high on that mast and maximizing the energy is just what he does and the style that he does it with as well. love it. Cause I like talking about these races now, like I remember, think, I think it was paddle and moo. can't remember now or to

Jon McCabe (1:13:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:13:29)
where he had something, a little glitch on the start. Can't remember. He kind of fell back in the pack. And then it was Larry Foyler's video that I saw from the, from the start of the race. And then everybody just passed him, but everybody's like, you know, hunched forward and paddling and paddling. And all of a sudden you see Kane just like lean back super high on the mast and just start to like do these longboard cars and just pass everyone surfing, you know,

Jon McCabe (1:13:58)
Yeah,

I feel very blessed to be around him in the water and to see him from the beginning of riding at Ho'okipa and really putting on a show. The first real show I saw was Tito on with the wing at Ho'okipa. And I was like, whoa, this guy is next level. I didn't know you can even do these things with a wing. And then Kane has done anything and everything.

Daniel Paronetto (1:14:15)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:14:26)
with the foil in that zone and every other zone. And yeah, his down landing is just like the most ⁓ unique thing. I mean, to not put that much effort into it and still perform at the top level is incredible. Yeah. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:14:43)
Yeah, well, let's talk a little

bit about these races man because Well, you won it. Let's start with that. You won it by four seconds

Jon McCabe (1:14:46)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It was tight, yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:14:54)
That was super tight, but, I got

a little bit of a low down from Cynbad um, in hood and she was, her eyeballs were like this big when she was talking to me. She's like, Oh my God, it was doing this and this, she slated, she came in fourth. Um, tell us about that race, man. Like what were the conditions like and what was it like to race a parawing?

Jon McCabe (1:15:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So conditions were interesting. We all are at Maliko Gorge, just of looking out the water, guessing what the wind's doing. Everyone's talking about how windy it is. And I'm looking out there, I'm like, yeah, it's cranking. ⁓ But there was a point where I looked back out before, during this meeting, you know, the skippers meeting and

Like it kind of looks a little lighter. I'm just going to send it with the big wing and ⁓ it ended up being a really good decision. However, it's very hard to do in high winds, right? To manage a giant five meter in high winds is not an inch. It's something people don't do. And luckily I did a race with ⁓ Alex Aguera. He kind of hosts races before the race and

Daniel Paronetto (1:15:58)
lord.

Jon McCabe (1:16:10)
really puts a lot of effort into getting guys out there and having fun on these downwinders. And he had one where I'm literally battling one of my really good buddies ⁓ on a wing who, you know, we raced a lot and I'm going just as fast, if not faster than him. He's on the latest, greatest Mike's lab. I'm on like a Levitas at that time. And yeah, we're just sending these crazy runs, but the start

Daniel Paronetto (1:16:15)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:16:39)
The starts have always been very tricky and without giving out too much help there, would say learn how to manage the wing at the start. That's the key, right? How are you gonna get to that start line and control and get back up and on foil with a big wing? Because if it's a pure just downwind, no stow, you know anything, ⁓ yeah, you gotta be able to bring

Daniel Paronetto (1:16:53)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:17:09)
Bring the heat. You gotta have the biggest thing out there, think, on downwinding. Or the wind's gotta be crazy fierce and then you can downsize. And it was almost there. We were like right on the, you know, right on the kind of teeter totter. So the start hit, Kane's literally right there telling me to get up, go.

Daniel Paronetto (1:17:32)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:17:35)
I hit a weird bump, face planted. I was out of the race in my mind already. was like, I blew it. Everyone's gone. then, because the sub guys were just sitting there watching basically. And it's a little hectic because there's like, what, 400 people or something in the water. So to try and navigate that, let alone

Daniel Paronetto (1:17:38)
⁓ shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like so yeah, I saw some images just so much going on

Jon McCabe (1:18:03)
you know, get everything together right at the start. And especially with a five meter where you need like kind of a runway. ⁓ It's a lot. There's a lot of things going on and the water is not the smoothest place either. It's pretty choppy at that start. So I just blew it. You know, I didn't didn't have it in that moment and fell. So then it was just like, all right.

Daniel Paronetto (1:18:10)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:18:31)
You got nothing to lose, just go as fast as you can, you know, versus if you're in the lead, you can kind of like hold back a bit, right? So I saw Marley the entire time. He was always ahead of me that entire race until the end. And I think there was an advantage to that. You know, he's

Daniel Paronetto (1:18:42)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:18:58)
one of our best spoilers and athletes here, you know, another young ripper. And I just had this little bit of advantage, a little bigger parawing and just a little bit more vision on the angles and how to just cut a little bit off of his time. And obviously to catch up to him was all at the start. Like I just had to really go hard, really hard, right? Once I did get it together.

Daniel Paronetto (1:18:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:19:26)
And then the finish was kind of unique with the parowing. It was kind of onshore, kind of light. So the angles are weird. Just keeping, just making a turn was hard to keep the parowing from not like falling out of the sky or over flying you. My final turn ⁓ was very behind, like the wing was completely upwind to me. I'm just like pumping.

Daniel Paronetto (1:19:34)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:19:53)
for dear life towards the finish, like, come on, baby, come on, baby. And, ⁓ you know, eventually reinflated in front of me. And I was like, thank you. And just made it in. And then it's like a little bit of a running finish, which is fun. ⁓ Yeah, they do a great event. And it really brings everybody from Maui together that foils and it's for a good cause. You know, it hits all the marks for me. Even if I wasn't going to do the race, I'd

Daniel Paronetto (1:19:53)
you

⁓ god.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:20:23)
I'd sign up for it just to just to, you know, donate to this cause. It's really great. Kids with special needs, you know, ⁓ they need all the support and help they can get. So it's really cool and lots of good ⁓ community vibes and people coming in from all over the world. ⁓ It's it's more of a sprint, though. I think it's like 20 minutes where.

Daniel Paronetto (1:20:29)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:20:50)
You know, you're into M's, you're into O's, you're, you're signing up for a much longer mission. ⁓ yeah, yeah. I love those for different reasons too, but they kind of pushed me to another level and endurance and stuff that I don't necessarily enjoy as much. Whereas just like fast sprint is just always fun for me. So yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:20:55)
A mission. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

What was, what are the conditions like when you're actually in the race? Like, was it like big swell that you had to navigate? Cause I mean, I'm imagining once you're in a trough of a big swell, you don't have wind and then all of sudden you come out, there's like wind behind you or, or is that just not a thing?

Jon McCabe (1:21:33)
⁓ yeah, it's definitely a thing. You're navigating bumps and overtaking them the whole time. ⁓ there's moments of just pure overpowered crazy. I'm at the top. I got to drop in and you have to be able to manage that power, ⁓ in that moment. And then there's moments of nothing and there's moments of making transitions where the wing is not doing anything. And there's moments of

Daniel Paronetto (1:21:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:22:03)
grabbing lines and luffing and you're still trying to hit that fall line like, you know, like Kane's hitting. ⁓ So the race before that that Alex put on, I was able to, you know, ⁓ stay right in line with all the sub-foilers, you know, top guys like Ben Spencer. And it's really cool to be able to do that. And with the pair of wing, it allows me to do that.

Daniel Paronetto (1:22:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:22:28)
It allows me to track these guys and really learn what they're doing. Yeah, Maui is very special in that way. Like we do have probably the most talent out of anywhere and these guys are sending it every day. So if you get lucky to get behind one, really take advantage of it. You know, use the parawing to keep up with them if you have to and then grab it, stow it, try to do what they're doing. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:22:32)
you would learn so much. That's awesome.

you

Jon McCabe (1:22:57)
Good luck keeping up with them. But the foil sizes they're using is crazy small. ⁓ The speed in which they're going is incredible. It really is. And I'm definitely transitioning more into the cane style, taking that bigger foil and trying to make as much efficiencies in that arena with a bigger size. I really think

Daniel Paronetto (1:23:09)
Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:23:27)
He's the most innovative foil designer in that world. I just wish the products he's riding were available because everybody would want it. Everybody would navigate towards it. I don't know what the price point would be, but it seems like we're in a mass war a bit right now. Like who can have the best mass for the best rider? And I think

Daniel Paronetto (1:23:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:23:56)
there's some innovation there for sure. Like having a custom mask built for your specs, your weight, your style. That's probably the future down-winding in my mind. It's cool to be kind of on the fringe of it all, like seeing it from an outsider perspective, but having that race background and other sports and things. Yeah, but it's really...

Daniel Paronetto (1:24:19)
for sure.

Jon McCabe (1:24:23)
amazing to see the level that these guys are at and the commitment they're putting in for for I don't know what it's just pure enjoyment I guess you know it's kind of interesting how committed these riders are to what they're doing ⁓ yeah I haven't been able to yeah

Daniel Paronetto (1:24:40)
I think whenever you put people in a race, when

you, when you, put people racing, you get to a competitive level where you are looking at the one percenters. You are tweaking things that you wouldn't tweak for a session. And, and that's, I mean, there's a lot of growth that happens with it, even though racing doesn't appeal to me as much, ⁓ as just riding away, for example, ⁓ the industry in general will benefit from.

people racing and exploring the limit. And I was talking to you again, before the podcast about exploring the limit of the top end of the four of the pair wings. We don't get to ride at the speeds that you're riding on a race overpowered. and that's where you would see the power wing react in a way that you would never see it react like that. how, how fast were you guys going? Like what's the.

Maybe average speed. don't know. Like, I mean, top speed would be ridiculous, but.

Jon McCabe (1:25:37)
Probably mid 20s.

I don't that's probably your average. I don't track too much anymore. I just try to like get clean runs. That's all I'm thinking about and every time I try to deal with my watch it tends to take away from my quality of riding a bit. So ⁓ yeah, I'd say mid 20s maybe touching in to the 30 zone on those downwind.

Daniel Paronetto (1:25:49)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:26:07)
But it's doing that while you're navigating the bumps is what makes it tricky. If it was flat water, know, broad reach, you're going to go even faster for sure. ⁓ but yeah, it's a different style. And even though you're overpowered, if you're staying in the same spot, if you're going down wind, you're not really overpowered. It's almost like you're. Toe foiling, you know, behind a rope getting pulled.

Daniel Paronetto (1:26:29)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:26:37)
in the moments where you'd normally be pumping. And then you have the dropping moments where you're not ⁓ needing that wing and it's luffing. So it's kind of a really nice balance of effortless downwinding when you keep the wing in the air. And I've I'm kind of like baffled that I find so much enjoyment in it, even though when I downwind now for pleasure,

I'm just selling it right and I yeah I don't have the I guess I don't see the progression as much in that I guess you can always get more speed out of things or ⁓ hit your record times but I already did that with Wayne and I don't know if I'm gonna beat my winging times at least with the gear I have right now so

Daniel Paronetto (1:27:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:27:35)
There's that and then also just the progression that I'm making in the downwind world of just reading the bumps and being more like, you know, your standard downwind foiler or, you know, guys that are pushing that limit without any needed help, right? So I want to be better at that, obviously, like everybody.

Daniel Paronetto (1:27:55)
Well.

Yeah. Look, I'm going to read out some of the times from the race here. You did a 24 ⁓ four Marley 24 ⁓ eight. So that was tight. ⁓ and that's on the pair wing obviously. And then on the wing, ⁓ it was an 18 minute kind of best time, but you, with your time, you would have come ninth on the wing for a race out of like 70 something athletes.

Jon McCabe (1:28:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:28:29)
And then when you look at...

Jon McCabe (1:28:30)
Yeah,

I did have that fall too. like, yeah, there is maybe a minute shaved off there just trying to deal with that. like, I think, yeah, I think there's a lot of room for making that faster, right? And it's not something I'm kind of on the same program as you, like it's not my focus. But when the race time comes, it becomes my focus, right? So I get, I always scramble like the day before for everything. And

Daniel Paronetto (1:28:33)
true.

Mm.

Jon McCabe (1:28:59)
I love that like maiden voyage. Well, there's like a maiden voyage on, on the equipment and there's something about that. ⁓ just change. I I'm not the guy that takes the same thing every day. I'm the guy that changes everything and then experiences it and then makes tweaks and then hits it again. And, ⁓ a lot of times I don't get it right. And that's fine. You know, ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:29:00)
sanding the foils and getting everything.

Hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:29:29)
I enjoy that side of it more so than just like optimizing one thing. So, but everybody's kind of got different, different things and yeah. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:29:36)
Mm-hmm.

So how do you see like parowinging growing man? What's like what kind of disciplines do you see coming up and solidifying themselves and.

Jon McCabe (1:29:52)
Okay, yeah, I'm glad you asked that because it instantly brought me to the event that I envisioned in my mind, right? The race, if you want to call it that, that actually is what we all want to do, right? And I've kind of thought through it a bit and we have a perfect spot at Ka'a for it, which is already like the foil park of waves and good times and all wingers and kiters and

Daniel Paronetto (1:29:58)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Jon McCabe (1:30:22)
whatever, you everybody's there in my mind anyways. I've been there for 15 years, like as much as I can go and taught a lot of lessons and all that. But anyways, it's kind of up higher where you sit. So you got kind of a peanut gallery, if you'd want to call it that, where everyone just heckles everything they see. And it's always been like that. And with kiting, it was very unique to the point where people would just get chewed up and spit out.

Daniel Paronetto (1:30:43)
Yep.

You

Jon McCabe (1:30:53)
⁓ with winging, you know, we can get some shore break and yeah, there's some guys that will get trashed, but it's not too bad. And then, you know, all the prone foiling in the morning is insane there. It's kind of just the spot that is perfect in my mind for everybody and winging, but don't, don't travel there and, and don't come to our beach. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, it's.

Daniel Paronetto (1:31:05)
Hmm.

It sucks, actually.

Jon McCabe (1:31:22)
itself regulates. There's all kinds of stuff involved with that spot too, ⁓ just like anywhere. You're not going to turn up and know what's going on. You're going to get humbled very quickly in Hawaii. So it's great ⁓ in that way that we can all just experience it ⁓ in different ways and have fun. But back to the special race or whatever you want to call it, I think there's got to be

Daniel Paronetto (1:31:34)
Mm-mm.

Jon McCabe (1:31:51)
all elements. It's got to have the high speed, crazy fast down winding. It's got to have the up winding, of course, as all races do. It's got to have. And this is the part I like is kind of when you get to that high point, maybe take off on some sort of bump or whatever comes your way when you get there. Then there's the pack ability, the way the wave experience or knowledge of reading that.

Daniel Paronetto (1:31:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:32:19)
It funnels into a slalom course where you cannot redeploy your wing unless you come off foil. So you're literally pumping through a slalom course, which I've seen these competitions where these guys are doing like dock starts or getting towed in and they're actually making these radical turns around these buoys. And I'm like, what?

Daniel Paronetto (1:32:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

wingtips out

and just, yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:32:50)
Yeah, I'm like,

what is this? I've never seen this in my life. And I think on a downwind reach, you could easily do that without as much pump effort as like if you're going into the wind or whatever. And then you have the option to either redeploy or keep it stowed. You got to come into another section, which is like the pro pool, we call it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:33:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:33:17)
And I think that's when you have another required pack and pump to the finish, which is in kind of a dead zone. It's kind of in a lee, flat water ⁓ section. So the start and finish are in the same spot where everyone's at. Everyone can see the entire course. The furthest out you're going is just to the reef. It's probably half a mile and it's just for that one reach.

Daniel Paronetto (1:33:31)
I like that.

Jon McCabe (1:33:46)
From there in, it's like you're just navigating some buoys, solemn chorus and a finish where you can literally track everybody that's out there.

Daniel Paronetto (1:33:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:34:00)
The tricky parts, the tides, but we'll figure it out. But I really want to see this course happen. because we have reef, have, even when there's no waves, it works. Like you can connect this low energy kind of wind swell that comes in. ⁓ Guys will have to really choose their foil sizes wisely. it really becomes like who picked the right gear for the conditions. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:34:04)
I like that.

Mm-hmm.

It's tricky because you want to be fast, but if you're connecting bumps and you're on a 600 foil, you're going to be, you're going to be, it would be interesting to maybe put like some sort of GPS tracker on the board where we could like take some time off people that are pumping. you're turning like you're sweet, as soon as you start pumping, you start adding like a little bit of time to your time to just reinforce the turns.

Jon McCabe (1:34:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I was thinking about like, what happens if you miss a slalom buoy or you don't pack it away? Like that should be an option, but you get penalized, right? So, cause there's going to be people doing whatever and they're just like, it's all I could do, right? It's like, and yeah, they still get an award. But then the other thing I really want to see is a downwinder.

Daniel Paronetto (1:35:02)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

it's going to be a free for all.

Jon McCabe (1:35:26)
that awards the slowest guy that gets the most time on foil and you're actually like pumping into the wind and like trying to just stay out there as long as you can. like staying on foil, like that's the key, right? You can't be like falling a bunch. It's like more like who gets the most foil time. And I'd love to see where that could go with a big foil probably most likely. ⁓ But maybe not, I don't know.

Daniel Paronetto (1:35:30)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:35:56)
But when I ride bigger foils, I tend to not hit the downwind line that I want. I'm kind of kicking out of the back of a lot of stuff to find the next one, the next one. And I feel like you could do that for a really long time. And I still have a blast. Well.

Daniel Paronetto (1:36:13)
just don't call it a race. As soon as you put race in the name, then it goes

into this weird place of just getting there as fast as you can. And then ⁓ everything you're talking about goes out of the window.

Jon McCabe (1:36:23)
Well, I think you still

need that for the top guys that are pushing the limits. You still need that. But then it'd be really cool to be rewarded for the cruisers and the guys that are going out, free riding and having a blast. I mean, I was super jealous of Sam on his M2M run, just cruising, hitting a great line. I took a wing. I tried to go super fast.

Daniel Paronetto (1:36:36)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:36:53)
I did take a line more like the sub foilers just to experiment with it this year. And I did surf a lot with that, but like I was trying to go fast. You know, I wasn't going for the enjoyment factor as much. ⁓ I don't know. think we really need to be careful not to get away from that too much. And, know, even in the moot, it was kind of just like, Hey, who goes the fastest? Who takes the smallest? This the biggest that and just sends it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:36:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Jon McCabe (1:37:22)
It ended up being really cool because we are pumping to the finish. are like kind of getting pushed to our skill sets too ⁓ in that. wasn't just who took the biggest thing. was like, yeah, there was a lot more to it. And, you know, Ryan Arzy, who got third, he's a good buddy of mine too. And he, he was kind of like a sleeper. was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you got a five five and like.

Daniel Paronetto (1:37:27)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:37:51)
Where'd you come from? Like, what are you doing? Like, you're a subfoil guy. Like, what's going on here? You know? So it was kind of a funny thing to see. But Marley did it really cool where he parawinged one event, he subfoiled the next, and then he won the M2O on the third, which I was really impressed with, yeah, what he did on that one. So I don't know. think, yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:37:52)
Yeah

That says heaps about his talent, doesn't it? Just going from

discipline to, yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:38:22)
I don't think I don't know if I'll actually be able to beat him again. He really impressed me on that into time and you know his pair of wings gonna go through the roof this year. So we'll see what happens if Andrea who put up that 18 time on the wing touches it on a race. There's no stopping that kid. He's our fastest rider on Maui fastest spoiler. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:38:30)
Hmm.

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I love the, this idea for what is a, a parawing, a proper power parawing race and everything that it has to, to have to, you know, touch on everything that the, the parawing can do and, and, and give us. ⁓ but what other disciplines do you see kind of gaining, gaining a little bit of strength? And, ⁓ I think down-winding, you know, tick, obviously there's, there's something there and people are finding the, benefits of the power wing for it. But what else?

Jon McCabe (1:39:19)
I think there's a whole plethora of other activities outside of flailing that are going to start happening. Yeah, para wing surfing for sure. I'm definitely taking my longboard out to this one wave and going to start sending some some wave laps. I've already started experimenting with that. ⁓ I think there's definitely going to be.

Daniel Paronetto (1:39:26)
really?

Mmm.

Okay.

Jon McCabe (1:39:43)
kayakers, there's going to be jet ski rescues. It's going to start growing into other arenas where it might just be a safety thing or a backup, but it's going to be saving the day. We just did a jet ski mission to a wave spot and it went really south on us. And if I had my para wing, I would have easily been able to navigate the jet ski. Luckily I had a kite. It all worked out, but

Daniel Paronetto (1:39:53)
Yep. Yep.

Jon McCabe (1:40:12)
The parawing would have been way less stressful than this kite in this moment. I don't know, there's just so much to be discovered in that world of rescue. Maybe even lifeguards start carrying them. I don't know. But it's one of those things that can really save the day from my experience. Yeah, just having, and that's part of why I like having that backup on me.

Daniel Paronetto (1:40:16)
Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:40:41)
I actually mentioned it to Greg way back in the day. Like I just want to rescue kite. You know, I want a kite that saves me if everything fails when I'm out kiting big waves. And he like thought about it. And he, the reason I brought it to him is cause he had the leading edge, ⁓ only kite, right? It was the simplest kite in my mind of maybe I have a CO2 cartridge that I just push a button. It inflates. It flies me in. Right.

Daniel Paronetto (1:40:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:41:11)
⁓ Obviously the parowings way better than that situation. And thank you, Greg, for bringing it to the market like you have. ⁓ But it's funny that that was talked about that long ago and we just, and we had trainer kites, but it just took this long to get here, you know? Yeah. But I see a lot of rescue situations, a lot of kayaks and different sports, outrigger canoes, you name it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:41:15)
Yeah.

It's crazy. It's crazy.

Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:41:41)
Anybody that isn't enjoying the wind can now potentially enjoy the wind with these. They fly themselves. I I've got a two year old that I've been handing it off to regularly. Like, you want to fly it? You want to fly it? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so intuitive. It's the ease of use on these things is really incredible. And that's really what draws me to it all. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:41:59)
That's cool.

I'm

surprised you didn't mention anything about snow-cutting or snow-boarding with it. Like, I don't know if it has enough power to take you...

Jon McCabe (1:42:18)
for sure.

No, for sure. Like that five meter, 100%. That's what I'm taking to Alaska. yeah. Up the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's going to be some European guys in France that are going to do it. Like there's no doubt in my mind, like the best snow kites are in that zone. ⁓ I'm just lucky that I've been around them, snow kiting to learn from.

Daniel Paronetto (1:42:22)
like up a mountain? wow. Dude, you have to do that. Like you're the man to do that.

Mm.

Jon McCabe (1:42:46)
these just mountain legends. But yeah, there's gonna be a lot of experimentation in that world. It's a way safer option for a lot of people that don't kite and don't need to fly off the mountain. I think there might be an in-between even on the line lengths. Like I think you might want even longer lines so that you could maybe get a little loop out of it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:43:09)
Yep, for sure.

Jon McCabe (1:43:12)
But even on like those ozone lines, like we were saying, like, how do I deal with those? Like it's a two step line process. Like I know you mentioned you need to be able to grab the leading edge. Well, you kind of don't, you just need to be hitting the right angles or being there, you know, ⁓ being this mindset where I'm not holding the leading edge, but I'm in control. I've got my, you know, four center lines and I can.

Daniel Paronetto (1:43:25)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:43:39)
do another step to get to the leading edge from there. ⁓ It's kind of like a big D power into the same thing you're doing, but it's all about managing the lines correctly. Same thing with if you're in the snow, you're on a ridge, it's blowing 50. The beautiful thing there is there's always a place you can put the kite or the wing that doesn't have wind, and it's usually on the backside of a mountain.

Daniel Paronetto (1:44:06)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:44:08)
As long as you can stall it or fly it forward and out of the wind, it's going to be super easy to pack down. So that's what we did with snow kiting. We climb up these mountains and we land our kite out of the wind on the backside of these hills, stupor seat mountains. And talk about crazy, man. You're like...

just putting all your faith in this kite is gonna land in the right spot. And you're just feeling like you want to just get blown off the back of a mountain ⁓ into probably an avi zone or whatever. if you can find comfort there, and it's really helped me with parawinging too. It's like when you are in that complete, like out of control mode, everybody's been in it at some point. If you can find comfort in that mode,

Daniel Paronetto (1:44:38)
⁓ god.

Jon McCabe (1:44:59)
you will progress, right? ⁓ So yeah, don't get frustrated and blow up, know, just try to breathe through it and it'll all be all right.

Daniel Paronetto (1:45:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, slow it down, you know, and ultimately you'll be not just going down when like crazy.

Jon McCabe (1:45:16)
But yeah, think the snow

has a lot. mean, skateboarding too, like why not? If there's wind, you know, it's like, sure. This thing flies in the crappiest wind conditions, you know, and you can have fun with it in all kinds of ways. So yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:45:21)
Yeah.

Mm.

There was

this guy that he reached out to me on Instagram and he just sent me a video of a frozen lake and he's on skates and he's on the parawing just freaking like going, I don't know how fast, but I can imagine as well, like a course, like a little go-kart track on that lake. That would be insane to do a race with the parawing. And ultimately you would have to go up wind where you pack it down and then you're skating, but then you pop it out and then you do half of the course going down wind. I'm like,

Jon McCabe (1:45:53)
Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:46:03)
God, that's so cool. So yeah, I think we're just scratching the surface, man. We don't even, we don't even know, but I think these people, whoever you are out there doing these crazy things, put it out there because man, what he sent me, I was just like that. want, I want to skate. I'm not a skater. I like to go sideways, but I looked at that and like, looks like so much fun.

Jon McCabe (1:46:27)
Yeah, yeah. there's like a whole, you know, I came from that snow kiting background. So there's a whole plethora of options on different snow surfaces of what you ride and all of that. And then you've got buggies, you've got all these other land things that guys have done with kites. And I think it's all doable. And, you know, even with the wing, like I was

Daniel Paronetto (1:46:39)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:46:54)
jumping off cliffs as soon as I got that thing. Cause I was like, this is going to be sweet to jump off of, ⁓ you know, a big cliff and land in the water. Same thing with this, you know, but now guys are going wing overs. Like, ⁓ you know, we're seeing all these back flips happen. Like maybe they're jumping off of out of planes even, and just flying around like crazy with it. Who knows? You know, there's going to be all kinds of experimentation. ⁓ there's a guy I follow on Instagram.

something party before impact or something but like he's like skydiving, base jumping, throwing a kite out in the air like this guy's like the guy to send a parowing right now and see what he does with it.

Daniel Paronetto (1:47:38)
Is it Brian Grubb?

Jon McCabe (1:47:41)
I don't know his name. He's in Europe though. Yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:47:42)
Red Bull athlete? no,

think Brian's in the US somewhere.

Jon McCabe (1:47:47)
⁓ But this guy is just hilarious. He's just having the best time of his life. He's skating a fine line with his life, but you gotta give him credit. He's pulling it off. But there's all kinds of guys like that.

Daniel Paronetto (1:48:03)
Dude, like...

I like what, ⁓ I mean, I, I want to end this chat talking about, because we are talking about innovating and taking things in places where, you we can't even think about, and what do you think is this mindset that, you know, we, need to kind of cultivate within pair winging to promote that innovation and promote that progression.

Jon McCabe (1:48:30)
Yeah, so I know before the chat today here, we were talking about the plume a little bit and I've never tried it. I've flown it on the beach. I've seen it. you know, I really want to bite my tongue on anything negative about it until I tried it. And I think that's really important for any news or any new innovation within foiling to keep an open mind, you know.

Daniel Paronetto (1:48:40)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:48:58)
try it before you deny it. And that goes with all levels of foils to wings to whatever's just because you see it and you think you know, you don't know. And until you've really tried something and committed to it for a while, you really shouldn't be putting out negativity towards it. ⁓ I think everything that's made has its place in our market, in our world. And I think

Daniel Paronetto (1:49:10)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:49:26)
you know, try to stay positive on it because, you know, negativity is what really just drags sports down, drags, you know, it just creates bad vibes in the water. We're all trying to have fun. We're all trying to coexist. Today at Ho'okipa, two surfers are out. I'm out on a pair of wing. think a kiter shows up, a winger shows up, and then a wind surfer shows up.

Daniel Paronetto (1:49:53)
Wow.

Jon McCabe (1:49:55)
We're

all out there at the same time and I'm just thinking, wow, we are coexisting and we're all getting our fun waves, our fun moments. ⁓ It was a very unique thing to see and I want more of that. with kiting, I really felt kind of outcasted in a way from the windsurfing world, especially here in Maui. There's

Daniel Paronetto (1:50:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:50:24)
all these rules that get made on innovation and new sports and people want to make rules really quickly before really giving things a chance or seeing how it performs historically on safety levels, different things. And it's just really important to stay positive and just support each other no matter what people are doing. I mean, there's going to be all kinds of nutty things you see in the world. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:50:37)
Mm-hmm.

Jon McCabe (1:50:52)
when it comes to foiling specifically, I don't care how big their thing is or how heavy it is or how dangerous it appears, don't knock it till you try it. know, ⁓ because that guy's having the time of his life, if he's not affecting people in a negative way or ruining experiences, you're just being negative. And yeah, I still need to try that plume. The guys I've talked to,

Daniel Paronetto (1:51:19)
Mmm.

Jon McCabe (1:51:22)
that really enjoy it, really enjoy it. And I want to feel what they're feeling. I want to experience that, whether it's for me or not, is to be determined. I'm thinking it's on the not side, but you never know. It could be that rescue kite that I was thinking of that Greg, I wanted to make, because it's kind of that same concept. ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:51:34)
Never know, man.

Mm-hmm.

I like that man.

and it's, to me, I, I bit my tongue so many times with foiling when I saw kite foiling, I shat on it and I was a twin tipper wake style guy that it was never going to touch a foil. And then when I tried one, I never touched the twin tip again, which was crazy. Like it was a pretty much like instant flip. And then with the wing, was the same. saw the wing and I'm like,

And then I had a whole year that I was just winging because it gave me something that nothing else did. So I had to learn not the hard way, but like I got shown what. You know, innovation and creativity and fun could look like, and I had to bite my tongue a few times. So now every time I see something, I don't judge it. And maybe that thing is not going to be the ultimate thing, but it's going to give someone else an idea.

Jon McCabe (1:52:15)
You

Daniel Paronetto (1:52:45)
the thing that's gonna be the thing, you know? So we just need to allow for innovation without being too picky, too snarky, too, you know, judgmental. And I love that point of view that you have. And I hope we can kind of, you know, spread that within the foiling community and parawinging in general.

Jon McCabe (1:53:02)
Yeah, I think, I

think like taking ownership of an area and outcasting new sports is just a wrong mentality altogether. Obviously, the guys before you deserve their credit. They deserve their place, maybe more so than you. But at the same time, we're all trying to have fun together. And you just got to really respect each other on a human level. It's tricky. I know.

I'm with you. judged winging. I judged other things and then ended up doing them and having more fun than I ever thought. ⁓ the guy having the most fun in the water is the winner, you know.

Daniel Paronetto (1:53:35)
You

Yep.

Yeah, 100 % man. And it seems like you're that guy, man. Like right now you have your stoke like super high, wet hair. So yeah, that's what it's all about, man.

Jon McCabe (1:53:55)
Today

was a good day, you know, every day should be the best day ever in my mind and yeah big shout out to Jim Bones he's he's the ultimate foil legend in my mind and He passed away. But yeah, he's Always looking after all of us Maui foilers and just pure stuff. I mean this guy Shredded harder and longer than any person his age any person on Maui period

Daniel Paronetto (1:54:06)
Jim Bones.

Jon McCabe (1:54:25)
And yeah, just, wanna be, I wanna bring the aloha that he's got into the world and I'll never be there, like I'll never get there, but just to try and think like he thought, be like he was is just such a good goal to have. And a lot of the stuff I've talked about is the way he lived and... ⁓

Daniel Paronetto (1:54:50)
Mm.

Jon McCabe (1:54:51)
really, really strong influence in my life in water sports, yeah.

Daniel Paronetto (1:54:57)
Dude, I want to thank you so much for coming on, John. We've been lining this up for a little while, but you know, good things sometimes takes, takes time to come into place and fall into place. So now you're one of the guys that I'm definitely going to reach out, you know, in a six, 12 months time to touch base again, because I respect your views. I respect your writing. I love what you're doing and ⁓ keep sharing that Stoke man. think that's.

That's the ultimate thing. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for your Stoke levels and we'll chat soon, man. No, no doubt about it.

Jon McCabe (1:55:32)
Yeah,

thanks for having me. Hope to see you on Maui one day.

Daniel Paronetto (1:55:36)
Yeah, I definitely need to hook up that trip. It's going to be probably the next one next year.

Jon McCabe (1:55:41)
I'd say hit the winter, try to get some proper waves, experience.

Daniel Paronetto (1:55:44)
⁓ but

man, I don't need that big way. Like I don't need those big ways, man. I'm not that.

Jon McCabe (1:55:49)
you

can go to the other side in downwind if you want or whatever, like the big waves and that, man, the energy that is out in the world in those moments on the North Shore is very unique. And that call spot, you pick your size. The further out you go, the bigger the wave. You can turn at any time, experience whatever size you want. ⁓ So yeah, just send it for a winter session if you can.

Daniel Paronetto (1:55:52)
Yeah.

Jon McCabe (1:56:17)
I think personally, that's where my heart is. ⁓ I do. But the downwind community and the foiling in those race moments are pretty unique too. they're both cool. But for me, if you're coming to Hawaii, come for some proper waves and get humbled a bit and go home and tell a big story, you know?

Daniel Paronetto (1:56:17)
All right. I'll.

I'll try to save some money for it.

Mmm.

Alright, I'll do it.

Jon McCabe (1:56:42)
All right. Thanks for having me.

Daniel Paronetto (1:56:44)
Good to talk

to you, John. was a pleasure, And we'll chat soon.

Jon McCabe (1:56:48)
Yeah,

you as well.

Daniel Paronetto (1:56:50)
Cheers,

024_Jon McCabe: Inside the Parawing Revolution: Gear, Flow, and Ultimate Freedom on the Water

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