OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A boater responsible for the deaths of three people was sentenced in Olympia to six years in prison.

Vincent Farler, 43, entered an Alford plea to homicide by watercraft and was sentenced Thursday in Thurston County Superior Court.

The plea means he does not admit guilt, but expects that he would be convicted if the case went to trial.

Three people - 32-year-old Bryan L. Pierce, 9-year-old Cameron McCartney and his 5-year-old brother Sean - drowned in June on the Nisqually River when Farler ran a boat into a logjam.

The boys' mother, Erin McCartney of Yelm, survived.

Erin McCartney had never met Farler until a short time before she got into the boat with him that day with her sons and friend. None of them were wearing lifejackets.

The father of the two boys, a soldier serving in Iraq, was left childless by the accident.

Farler admitted after the accident that he had been drinking while he drove the boat in tight circles and flipped it. A preliminary breath test measured his blood alcohol level at 0.193, more than twice the legal intoxication threshold for operating a boat, court papers said.