It can be crazy how tight it can be. We had a leg into Cocoa several years ago that went from 10am to 3am the next day. The night sky was completely overcast and we sailed all that darkness only seeing a boat once at around midnight. It was Jamie Livingston and we almost collided 1 mile offshore with our kites up as he flashed across our bow out of the complete blackness (not a good time for us to own a dark blue boat). As we were about an hour away from the finish, a hole in the clouds opened up and the moon allowed us to see FOUR boats right with us. We crossed into the surf line overlapped with Team Tygart at about 2:30am after 16.5 hours of racing.

That was also the finish where one of the ground crew members was in the surf to "help" the boats in (it was blowing 12 and we were sailing in with kites up...no help needed). Someone on the beach, obviously concerned for that person's well being, lit up the person with a spot light but also hit me in my very dark adjusted eyes with the beam. Blinded (and a bit confused at what just happened) I lost my bearings with the waves and let one accelerate under the stern driving the bow hard into the sand. Frank and I both were thrown from the boat but our sharp (and sober) ground crew caught the boat before it flipped.

We've also seen an entire race win come down to 10 seconds after 500 miles.