Editor,

Musselfest has always been designed to promote the restaurants and businesses in our community, especially those in the Historic Coupeville catchment area.

The event planners and volunteers, along with members of the  Board and Coupeville Historic Waterfront Association, work hard to make our businesses the focus of the event.

As a result, most everyone reports they have one of their best business weekends of the year.

Knowing that, we are accomplishing our goal. We are committed to continue our vigilance as the event grows and brings even more visitors to town.

A couple of bragging points:

84 percent of the reporting businesses have their best weekend of the year during Musselfest.

100 percent of the restaurants, in all of Coupeville, tell us they reached capacity Saturday, and had decent Sundays in spite of the weather.

Through the event, $43,300 was put back into the community with donations or earned by non-profits from Central Whidbey.

The Island County Museum counts Musselfest weekend as one of their key fundraising events of the year.

The Coupeville Boys and Girls Club receives a great donation and also earns money by parking cars during the event.

The Coupeville High School Science Club benefits from a donation.

Coupeville Booster Club café sells mussels both Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine.

Central Whidbey Youth Soccer Club, Boy Scouts Troop 4058, Girl Scouts of America, Rainbow Girls. Coupeville Senior Class, and Coupeville Maritime Heritage Foundation all earned money for their non-profit groups.

Saturday, we sold out of 2,000 chowder tasting tickets in 97 minutes. Saturday tour boat tickets were sold out by 1 p.m.

The rain Sunday slowed sales, but we were on a good pace to do well. We continue to brainstorm how to add more tickets giving more visitors a chance to participate.

We are proud of our accomplishments and very proud of our membership. We all put our best foot forward, welcome guests to our beautiful town.

We spruce up the streets, turn on the lights and prop the doors open to all. The welcoming message was felt by the 8,000 guests attending the festival.

Musselfest is March 4-5, 2017. Want to get more involved? We would love to have you on our planning committee  —  just give me a call.

Again — thank you for all you do to make Historic Coupeville and Central Whidbey the place people want to visit and return time and again.

Vickie Chambers

Executive Director,

Coupeville  Historic Waterfront

Association