How about a real world example, Jake?

In 1994, the H-20 Nationals (St. Joseph, MI) and H-17/H-16 Women's (Syracuse, NY) were on successive weeks in September.

I did the scoring for the first and sailed in the second event. I had the vacation time then and they were "only" a 10 hour drive from each other. (BTW, I had a total blast at both events.)

Several people (Alan Egusa, Bruce Fields, John Bauldry that I can remember) did both events - and they came from the west coast.

Like I said, it's not like the HCA dictates when these events will be. Most event organizers tell the HCA when they can hold them. Rarely is there more than one group willing to host a particular event. If there is a major conflict, the HCA tries to resolve it with the organizers.

Sometimes it doesn't work out - even within our own classes. For example, the Tiger Worlds (in Cangas, Spain) next year are within a week of the Tiger NA's in San Francisco. Not a problem until you figure that to ship a boat to the worlds (even though it's free) will have your boat in a shipping container for two months in the middle of sailing season! The HCA is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we've got world competition; on the other, we've got the prestigious St. Francis Yacht Club willing to host an event for us (and they have a completely booked schedule).

We pointed out the problem for NA sailors when the dates for the Cangas event were announced, but it went forward anyway. The vast majority of Tiger sailors are European and we were outvoted.