The achilles heel of your proposal is that very few US Sailors will schedule and pay for two NA's in their season. There is a small group ... perhaps 15 to 20 teams that will play this much and this core of very active sailors is the core turnout for a USSA championship.
In 2012, When you add in the BYOB factor (charter your own boat) PlUS geography (how close are the events to your home).... plus similar class NAs (F18 = F16 = N17.... or (Hobie 16's Hobie 20s or a single handed Hobie boat to draw a few teams to their event....) the number of sailors willing to compete at their second event, a Stand alone USSA championships is below ten teams. The event can't be credible or financially viable with this small core of sailors.
IMO, the only solution is to partner with a class OD championship and rotate the classes and displines..
The multihull community can NOT screw over host Yacht Clubs who commit to a long regatta and have a terrible turnout of sailors....
I agree that this can be an issue. However, I do believe that if the qualification/selection process is early enough and the field at those qualifiers deep, you can fill a 20 or 30 team roster at the championship with a couple of early commitment deadlines where you dig deeper in the results to get attending teams. To quote Mike, it will take some bravery. There will probably be a larger local sailor attendance to the event due to proximity - but this happens all the time everywhere. If the championship region and timing are able to be selected carefully to avoid proximity and timing conflicts within that class, I bet you could get a good draw.
I just don't see much of an upside to having it combined with another event. It's nothing but a piece of hardware at that point. There's no need for a budget, management, organization, etc. As a bonus, the host club probably has to live within the USS sponsorship agreements in order to give out the trophy. They probably also have to pay US Sailing some sort of per sailor fee and have to live with the same USS membership requirement of everyone in the entire event. I don't see an event that would be willing to sign up for all that headache to be able to hand out an extra trophy. The cost to benefit ratio isn't favorable to anyone but US Sailing.
