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Local man wins $250,000 boat Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Eagle Point business owner Gerald "Swede" Hastings won this fishing boat in a Maryland raffle. He'll launch it in Brookings on Tuesday. By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Who needs the luck of the Irish this St. Patrick's Day week if you can get a little luck of the Swede to rub off on you? Gerald "Swede" Hastings, 60, of Eagle Point parlayed a $200 check and a lucky feeling into a new 48-foot fishing boat he won in an annual raffle benefiting East Coast commercial fishermen. "That's quite a deal, isn't it?" said Hastings, who owns Swede and Sons Army and Navy Surplus Store near White City. "I've never been to Maryland. Heck, I didn't even know it was near Washington, D.C. Now, I got a $250,000 boat from there." The boat, christened Miss Chesapeake II, will be launched Tuesday into the Port of Brookings-Harbor and the keys turned over to the Swede, who paid $11,800 to have it shipped across the country by truck. A former commercial fisherman, Hastings owns a 40-foot boat that he regularly captains on recreational trips for salmon, tuna and halibut. While reading a national fishing magazine in December, he saw an advertisement detailing how a group was raffling off the large boat as a fund-raiser benefiting efforts to improve and sustain Chesapeake Bay fishing. Hastings, who said he never wins raffles or contests, felt the $200 ticket was worth buying. "I just felt good about it," Hastings said. "But I've felt good about a lot of things that I ended up not winning before." He asked his wife, Linda, to send away the money, but she didn't. Hastings found the ad again in January, and sent in his check. On Feb. 3, he received a message on his answering machine that the boat was his. "My brother and I went to Dairy Queen to celebrate," he says. The 48-foot boat sports twin 600-horsepower engines that enable it to run up to 30 mph. Its full suite of electronics makes it a state-of-the-art craft. When the Miss Chesapeake II is launched Tuesday, Hastings plans to fiddle around the Southern Oregon coastal waters with it for a while before he ultimately decides whether to keep it or sell it. But one thing Hastings doesn't plan on doing is changing Miss Chesapeake II's name. "I think that's a good name for it," Hastings said. "It's been good for me so far." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.