THE British America's Cup team raised the stakes for the 2003 America's Cup in Auckland last Friday by unveiling a boat that looks set to cause an upset.

For the first time in 16 years, Britain will be challenging for the oldest sporting trophy and, after a promising training period of just 15 months in two old boats that competed in the last Cup, the GBR Challenge crew can now look to hone their skills on the brand new Wight Lightning before the Louis Vuitton Challenger finals start in October.

The 80-foot racing machine was designed by a team of experts based mainly around Southampton and built at the GBR Challenge in Cowes.

Her name was picked from more than 18,000 entries in a Blue Peter competition and she was christened by HRH Princess Royal, who honoured a promise to syndicate leader Peter Harrison, despite the death of her grandmother a few days previously.

To the uneducated eye, Wight Lightning appeared a conventional America's Cup design but, in keeping with the secrecy that surrounds Cup boats, her hull and keel remained under wraps and a detailed specification was locked away in a safe.

Long and thin with a deep and narrow custom-designed cockpit to house 16 crew, closed-in transom, and chamfered sheer line to save weight, her match-winning qualities were not immediately apparent but according to Cowes' Jo Richards, a key member of the design team, Wight Lightning, on paper at least, should be a fast contender.

"To a lot of people it looks like a pretty conservative middle-of-the-road America's Cup boat with a Kiwi type bow," he said. "But this game is all about subtleties and it takes an educated eye to appreciate what you are seeing. The most obvious difference is the stern deck - which has structural and aerodynamic benefits. It's a lot narrower than most boats but we did mock-ups of the cockpit and it should work.

"You are allowed to be up to 25 tons and realistically most of the boats will be over 24 tons otherwise you are not going to be long enough and not have enough sail but obviously we are not going to tell people where we are."

"We are pretty chirpy about this boat. We have come a long way in the last 18 months and have tested more than 350 different hulls. Over 200 have been through a full analysis and we have built 20 quarter-size models and spent five months in a test tank testing them. We have learned an enormous amount.

"We should be able to tell within the first 500 metres when she is out on the water whether she is fast and I am looking forward to putting her on the water. The guys are going to have to learn how to sail it but they are a good bunch and they won't have a problem getting it round the track.

"We are competing against syndicates who are competing for ten years on five times our budget each time so there are huge swathes of knowledge and experience that we have either had to ignore or make assumptions on but, if we can get to the semi-finals, we will be very happy with that," said Richards.

So far, Harrison is believed to have ploughed £22m into his campaign but the bill is set to rise as the Challenger finals draw closer.