Near ports, the water can get mighty crowded. See, for example, all of the articles about the recent US Navy collisions.

That’s true but navigating in and around ports isn’t part of this competition it’s 100% open water sailing. The start lines are defined as lines of longitude with an autonomous run up of 40 nautical miles before hitting the start latitude and it’s roughly from a ways off the coast of Newfoundland to off the north coast of Spain both well away from land.

http://www.microtransat.org/rules.php

They demonstrate it is not _impossible_ to have ship to ship collisions, but considering how rare these events are they tell us more about the state of seaman skills in the navy than about navigational hazards.

The collisions weren't really "near" any port, and were due to really shitty ship handling by the person in charge, possibly due to how the navy treats its sailors.

Plus the eventual GPS disturbances caused by spoofing attacks. Thankfully only in the black sea, but still.

With the cartels on the horizon I see it forthcoming