A HAMPSHIRE lifeboat team has been equipped with a new lifeboat after recording its busiest ever year.

The Calshot crew answered 87 call-outs in 2001 as the number of people taking to the water in the Solent area continued to increase.

Calshot lifeboat station is already awaiting another busy summer.

Now the crew's Brede Class boat has been replaced with an Arun Class craft that is capable of being launched in all weathers and has a nautical range of 230 nautical miles compared with 140.

Station manager John Horton said: "Brede Class vessels are coming to the end of their useful life and ours was the last one still in service with the RNLI. The next generation of lifeboats are still on the drawing board. We won't get one for three to five years, so we've been equipped with an Arun Class craft in the interim."

The all-weather boat, Margaret Russell Fraser, was unveiled yesterday.RNLI members watched as the old and new craft, together with the station's inflatable inshore lifeboat, sailed in formation past Calshot Spit.

She was built in 1986, but was drafted into the RNLI's relief fleet and has never before been "on station".

A coastguard search-and-rescue helicopter from Lee-on-the-Solent staged a fly-past to mark the arrival.