of my trusty SSB. While a crisp sounding voice on the other end might be nice and dealing with different frequencies at different times of the day is a PITA, the SSB has always been there for me to one degree or another. One time I had to contact the CG to relay information to the CG doctor from an other doctor on board another boat. The owner of that boat had a heart attack. How lucky can you be to have a doctor on board when you have a heart attack. The wife of the victim called me on the vhf because they didn't have a SSB and asked for my help. I couldn't get ahold of the Coast Guard but I could get KMI radio and ended up relaying information between one heart doctor and the other guy who was a podiatrist. Better a podiatrist then no doctor at all! I believe the invention of the cell phone drove KMI out of business but they were the only game in town for years. It was a commercial SSB radio station that would do land line patches from vessels at sea. It was hugely expensive. We had the line open for a couple of hours but that call was over $1500 back in 1990 dollars. The fact that it was an emergency and the "victim" was later able to prove it so, he only has to pay a couple of hundred dollars in phone taxes. During those few hours I went back and forth just passing words from the SSB to the Vhf because I had no clue what they were talking about. The end result was that he was going to die if we didn't get him help. He had Cardio Myopathy which was caused by a virus in his heart. He was ok until his electrolytes got out of balance because he was perspiring so much in the tropics. His medication was set up for So. Calif. weather. The end result was that the CG wanted to evacuate him via chopper but the sun was going down and the Caribbean was doing it thing and rougher then hell. The CG wanted us to transfer him to a dinghy and tow him behind the boat. Then they were going to drop a diver into the water and transfer him to the basket and haul him up. We discussed it between all of us and decided that if the heart attack didn't kill him that the added stress of the rescue would so we decided to divert to Cuba. We were only about 50 miles off Santiago de Cuba so we turned left and hot footed it for Santiago. We spent two weeks on the dock in Santiago de Cuba under house arrest while they patched him up. When we got off the entrance and called the port captain he asked what nationality we were. I told him I was American but the guy having the heart attack was Danish. After a few moments he told me to head for the outer marker and that "we would be met." See the picture below.