"The Light is made for youth rowing and men and women weighing under 130 lbs. The boat is compressed but it is not cut down. It’s 24 feet long, so it’s size specific for lightweight rowers. It’s a scaled down racer but like the Torque the hull is a little heavier in the bow to add stability at the catch. These things combined with the adjustability and quality of the hardware make it a great boat for racing as well as gaining a foundation in sculling."

"In boatbuilding there’s a point where you just cannot decrease the depth of the hull. It doesn’t work any more; it just doesn’t run in the water. So the boat has to become shorter and deeper again. Same thing for a short boat. You can’t just increase the depth more and more in a short boat for a heavier rower. It just becomes more advantageous to lengthen the boat, up to 28 ft for a 250lb rower, for instance. I designed the Light to balance its length against the depth of the hull to ensure it sets up well and has an excellent run for light rowers. And the consensus from the people who row it is that the Light really succeeds in these areas."

"If kids are interested, they are going to have a lot of fun in this. The concept with the Light is it’s a mini racing shell. It’s not a flat boat, so they won’t get bored in it. The fundamental principles of the design was first commissioned by the Germans. What the coaches did was teach kids the rowing fundamentals and let them go out and have fun. There was no competitive angle to what they were doing, for the first little while."

"The whole thing to me is get your kid into sculling when he’s young and it will become second nature. He’ll be able to row port and starboard. If he matures into an athlete he can either be a sculler or a sweep person. If he’s a sweep oarsman by the time he’s sick of sweep rowing, at the end of his career, he’ll be able to scull. And that’s the big problem with people who don’t know how to scull – they learn how to sweep, many of them burn out and that’s the end of their rowing career. So for overall rowing development, as well as anatomically, putting young people into sweep boats is the worst thing you can do for them sometimes. The foundation of rowing should be sculling. And that’s a big reason why I built the Light."

"The Torque really responds at high rates. The feedback I get from elite rowers is once you start rowing at high rates you can see how the boat moves. It likes going fast."

"At the catch the boat is very stable when the blades are up. That’s what makes it a comfortable, easy boat to row. And in theory and practice that is why I rounded the hull, to get that functionality."

"How it sets up at the catch was the most important thing for me. I was conscious about that aspect of the rowing stroke when I designed it. And that’s also the feedback I have had, that the boat is extremely solid at the catch when the blades are off the water. There isn’t that little wobble that creates hesitation or anxiety."

"Another big advantage of the boat is the slope of the track is very deep. Combined with a high seat it creates clearance for the calves, which is an enormous benefit for a tall rower, a big man with a lot of power. I have been told by world-class, elite sculllers that this is a significant strength in the boat’s design."

"The Torque is very much influenced by the lines of the Chyrsler Building in Manhattan"