The Tempos big band was traveling to Port Townsend via the Kingston Ferry when things went seriously wrong. First a little background on this story.
     Who would have thought going to a band gig would be such an ordeal. The Tempos big band played at a fly-in in Port Townsend, a beautiful little town on the Olympic peninsula of Washington State. The easiest way to get there is to take a ferryboat. Washington has the largest ferryboat system in the United States. The boat ride from our side of Puget Sound to the peninsula is about a 30-minute trip. As we arrived at the dock and they were lowering the car ramp a cable broke and the whole ramp fell into the water throwing one ferry worker into the water with it.
     This would have been bad enough but they could not move the ferry boat over to another slip because when the ramp crashed it took out the power to the whole dock. The passenger ramp to the upper deck of the ferry had already been lowered and they could not raise it without any power. We sat there for three hours until they could raise it and move us over.
We finally got to the job an hour and a half late but after we got sat up and played the people loved us.