This situation (tacking too close) does happen away from marks or laylines. It happened twice at the Tanzer 16 Nationals (one of which was in front of me causing me to crash-tack) and I saw it happen on Hobie 16's at the Special Olympics last week.

As I count it, Artemis took 8 seconds to tack (2 to go head-to-wind, and 6 more to reach a close-hauled course). I saw GE taking avoiding action 6 seconds before contact, so I'm not sure that a crash tack would have been different except for where the boats hit.

Bear in mind that when GE bore away, she was the right-of-way boat. Even without contact, Artemis still broke rule 13. There was only one second at the most between Artemis gaining right-of-way and the collision. That is not "ample time" to tack.