Halibut Cove restaurant owner sentenced to house arrest for steering boat in front of floatplane

The owner of a well-known restaurant in Halibut Cove will spend three months on home confinement for a potentially dangerous encounter in 2022 between a boat she was driving and a nearby flightseeing plane.

Marian Beck, 70, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of gross negligent operation of a vessel during a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Anchorage on Tuesday. A charge of attempted destruction of an aircraft was dismissed as part of a plea agreement after she was originally indicted in January 2023.

During the hearing, Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess also sentenced Beck to give up her mariner’s license, spend three years on probation, and pay a $9,500 fine. Burgess described the incident as “road rage on the water” and said he hoped the sentence will “send a message that it’s not OK to take things into your own hands.”

Beck owns The Saltry Restaurant in Halibut Cove, a small community across Kachemak Bay from Homer. During recent years, including while the case was ongoing, she has experienced a number of medical issues, including seizures, bone breaks and a head injury, she said during the hearing.

The incident involving Beck’s boat and the plane was captured on video and widely shared online. In the video, the boat can be seen making close passes in front of a float-equipped de Havilland Beaver DHC-2. The U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska State Troopers began investigating the incident after seeing the video.

The plane’s pilot, Eric Lee, has previously said he had seven passengers in the plane for a sightseeing tour to Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The entrance to Halibut Cove is extremely narrow, making it dangerous for two vessels to pass at once, according to a sentencing memorandum written by Michelle Nesbett, who represented Beck. After a number of close calls, a Federal Aviation Administration regulation was put in place that barred seaplanes from entering the area during specified times set aside for ferries, the memorandum said.

In the days leading up to the encounter, Lee had “failed multiple times to abide by the community regulation,” Nesbett wrote.

When Beck saw Lee departing again, she “was so upset that she got into her boat and chased after the pilot to send him a message that he was violating the community regulations and that she and the community were upset about it,” the memorandum said. Beck’s had several frightening experiences with planes and crashes that left her “highly anxious of planes in the Narrows,” it said.

A low tide also left a nearby ferry with less room to navigate when Lee was beginning to taxi out of the community, the memorandum said.

Lee has previously said he feared the boat would hit the plane and he instructed the passengers to put on flotation devices in case evacuation became necessary. He did not respond to a message about Beck’s sentencing this week.

Federal prosecutors in a sentencing memorandum said Beck acted with “reckless indifference” when she drove the boat at high speeds near the plane.

During the hearing, Beck said she didn’t think before she acted out of fear that there would be a collision between the other ferry and the plane. She said she didn’t mean to scare anyone or make them feel unsafe. Beck is an experienced mariner and didn’t expect her action would cause an accident because she felt in control of the boat, Nesbett said during the hearing.

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Gavelek, who prosecuted the case, noted it was ironic that Beck has said she was acting to bring light to a dangerous situation, when she was in fact the person who endangered herself and others.

“A licensed captain, acting with due care under the same circumstances, would not have intentionally cut across the path of the seaplane multiple times, and would know to give way to the outbound craft,” prosecutors wrote in the memorandum. “Furthermore, her actions were caught on video, posted online, and received overwhelmingly negative responses. The community outrage regarding her behavior further bolsters the seriousness of the offense, and the need for appropriate adjudication.”

Beck will have the option to serve her house arrest in Halibut Cove or Hawaii, where she lives part of the year.

She declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.