Perhaps we should go back to the orginal format and the one used by all of the other US Sailing championships, with the modification that 20 slots are available.
The assumption behind 10 slots to Area Champions and 10 slots to National winners is that the area championship are hotly contested! So, in most areas this is not the case.
If two or more slots were available in a region based on turnout perhaps interest would go up.
The alternative is to just pick teams from the nationals.
Certainly would be a lot less work!