HAMPSHIRE skills and technology are at the heart of the boat which hopes to bring the America's Cup to Britain for the first time in the competition's 166-year history.

Bearing the unlikely name of Rita - LandRover BAR's black catamaran was launched in Bermuda this week, where the final cup races will begin in just over a 100 days.

The space-age looking craft represents the combined efforts across three years of the 120-strong team and their partners led by four-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Ben Ainslie.

The 15m craft contains 1200m of electronic and electrical cabling connecting 190 sensors and four video cameras.

Sir Ben's wife Georgie and baby daughter Bellatrix smashed a bottle of English sparkling Nyetimber wine to christen the race boat Rita – the name carried by all 19 of Ben’s previous Olympic and world championship winning boats.

Rita has yet to be lowered into the water but when she gets afloat in the next days the team will embark on an intensive testing and development programme, which will now include ‘in-house’ racing against their test boat ‘T3’.

Ben said: "It’s a great moment to see our AC50 Race boat hit the water in Bermuda. The launch represents the sum of all the team’s efforts to bring the America’s Cup home, and we’re delighted to get her in the water here in Bermuda.

"We’re a start-up team, and we had to build not just the boat but the design and engineering team, the facilities and the processes to get to this point today. There are just a few short months before the racing starts at the end of May, and we will be working very hard now on the final development and testing of this boat to make sure we are ready for the racing.”

The America’s Cup Class (ACC) boats are astonishingly fast. In the the right conditions they could achieve speeds of 60mph over the water.

Richard Hopkirk, the team's engineering manager, said: "The design, engineering and build process for a boat of this complexity stretches back to the very earliest days of the campaign.

"Everyone in the team and all our partners have contributed to getting this boat ready here today, and we’re all very proud of the achievement. The innovation, technology and attention to detail in the design and construction continue the America’s Cup’s traditions of the most advanced sailboats on the planet.

"We believe this is the most sophisticated and best prepared British challenger, with a total campaign design effort of 50,000 hours, and a construction effort of 35,000 hours for Rita.”

The ACC boats are longer and wider than the World Series boats, which the teams raced in the preliminary rounds including two visit to Portsmouth in 2015 and 2016, and carry more sail.

The high-tech carbon fibre hulls of both both Rita the T3 test boat were made by Green Marine in Hythe.

Green Marine are specialists in the racing field and built or part-built the first three yachts across the finish line in the recent Vendee Globe around the world race.

Richard Acland, the firm's Green Marine, said: "This is an amazing project for us to be involved with. All our projects are important but this is right up there in terms of the profile of the competition."

The hulls have to be made to race specifications so the equipment which could give the team the edge over their rivals are the foils, which have been designed at the team's Portsmouth HQ.

These beefy blades raise the hulls out of the water, reducing drag, and allowing the boat to “fly” .

The foils act exactly like an aeroplane wing and work by generating lift force when the boat speed reaches about 18 knots.

“The reason to foil is quite clear,” says Land Rover BAR’s chief technical officer Andy Claughton. “If you look at the average yacht sailing around, it might go at 10 knots on a good day. In the same wind we can go at 35 knots. We’re getting rid of 75 per cent of the drag of the boat by riding on our hydrofoils.”

Adjusting the angle of the foil, by changing “rake”, is a role performed by the helmsman with a panel of buttons. Changing rake alters the amount of lift.

So Ben and the British team hope to fly to victory.

Summarising why winning the America’s Cup is the next goal for Britain’s most successful Olympic sailor, Ben has been quoted saying “It’s the only major sporting event that we have never won. It is about being the best of British, to right that wrong and bring the cup home.”