Walk out to the end of Pocomo Road this week and the water looks different than it did in July, and not because of the light. The two orange buoys that sat off the point all summer, marking a boundary no one could actually see once you were standing on the beach, are gone. The families who spent August wading in the shallow slick behind that line have mostly gone home too. What's left is open water, right up to the tip of the point, and the kiteboarders who spent the season launching and landing in a narrow strip are riding it like the harbor belongs to them again. For a few months a year, it does.
Most people who watch the kites cross toward Coatue on a windy afternoon assume Pocomo Point just is what it is: a launch spot, a good one, maybe the best in the harbor. What they don't see is that the point runs on two different rule sets depending on the calendar, and the switch between them happened without a sign, a meeting, or a headline. If you live here, that's worth knowing, because it changes what the point looks like depending on when you show up.
The Line Only Exists in July and August
Pocomo Point sits at the head of Nantucket Harbor, protected on the outside by Coatue and Great Point, which is what makes it flat enough to be one of the better kiteboarding and windsurfing launches on the island in the first place. Kiteboarding is allowed there year round. But during July and August specifically, the Harbor Master places two buoys in the water off the point to create what amounts to an invisible fence over the swimming area. Riders are expected to launch and land only at the very end of the point and stay out of that marked zone otherwise.
The rule exists because the alternative was tried and it didn't work. Pocomo is also one of the better beaches on the island for small children, with warm shallow water and a sandbar that makes it forgiving for families. For a while, kiters and swimmers shared the same stretch of sand with no separation at all, and it went badly enough that kiteboarding was banned from the beach entirely for a year and a half. The two-buoy system that replaced the ban is a compromise: give the swimmers their patch of water in peak season, give the riders the tip of the point to launch from, and let everyone else have the rest of the harbor once Labor Day crowds thin out.
That's the part that's easy to miss if you only see the point in August. The buoys aren't a permanent feature of Pocomo. They're a summer-only accommodation, and once they come down, the point reverts to open water with no restricted zone at all.
Who Shows Up for Which Version of the Point
The two rule sets attract two different kinds of activity, and both are worth knowing if you're the one living a short walk from Pocomo Road.
In peak season, the beach belongs partly to instruction. Kitetucket runs lessons directly off Pocomo Beach on windy days all summer, offering private and group sessions along with foil boarding and paddleboard instruction. Next Level Watersports uses Pocomo Point as its regular pickup and drop off spot, teaching students in the flat water off Coatue on the east side of the harbor. Both operations depend on the buoy system working as intended: a protected corridor for beginners near shore, open water beyond it for the boat-supported lessons.
Once the restriction lifts, the point becomes something closer to a local's spot. Riders who know the site describe Pocomo as the classic side-shore launch, running across the harbor toward Coatue, with a longer downwinder possible from Pocomo all the way to Wauwinet on a lighter day. None of that changes based on the calendar. What changes is how close to the point itself you're allowed to ride, and for a rider who's spent all summer working around a marked-off swim zone, having that line disappear for the fall means a noticeably different session on the same stretch of sand.
If you're not on the water at all, the practical version of this is simpler: the crowded, roped-off Pocomo you remember from a July afternoon is not the neighborhood's default state. It's a temporary arrangement that expires on schedule, and what you're looking at from your porch in September is closer to how the point actually behaves most of the year.
The Harbor Working Behind the Recreation
A few hundred yards from where the kiteboarders launch, the harbor is doing something else entirely. Pocomo sits at the Head of the Harbor, which is also where Simon Edward's Fifth Bend Oyster Farm operates, raising oysters in the same protected inner-bay waters that Coatue and Great Point shield from open ocean chop. The farm supplies restaurants on island, including Cru, and every summer the Nantucket Land Council partners with Shearwater Excursions to run boat tours out to it so visitors can see what oyster farming actually looks like up close.
It's easy to think of Pocomo as purely a recreation beach, but the same calm water that makes it good for kiteboarding lessons is what makes it viable for aquaculture. Paddle west from the point into the Creeks, the shallow, winding water paths that cut through the marsh, and you're moving through the same system that keeps both the oyster beds and the kiting conditions consistent. The harbor doesn't separate its working water from its recreational water. It's one system doing two jobs at once, and Pocomo residents live at the spot where you can watch both from the same beach.
The Access Point Itself Is Changing
The other shift underway in Pocomo has nothing to do with wind or tide. A new bike path is planned for Wauwinet Road, the route that connects Pocomo to the rest of the island's east end. Right now, getting to the point without a car means relying on the small dirt lot at the end of Pocomo Road, which limits how many people can reasonably reach it on a given day. A dedicated bike path would change that math, making the point more reachable for anyone willing to ride rather than drive, and shifting some of the seasonal congestion at that lot onto two wheels instead of four.
It's a small infrastructure change next to a harbor rule and an oyster farm, but it points at the same underlying fact about Pocomo: this is a neighborhood where access, use, and even the water itself operate on rules and schedules that aren't obvious from the road. The beach in front of your house isn't a fixed thing. It's a set of seasonal agreements between swimmers, riders, farmers, and now cyclists, all sharing a small stretch of harbor that happens to be shaped just right for all of it.
That's really the thing worth sitting with this month. The Pocomo you saw in July, with its marked-off swim zone and lesson boats idling offshore, and the Pocomo you're looking at now, open water all the way to the tip of the point, are both accurate. Neither one is the whole story on its own. Knowing which version you're standing in front of, and why, is the difference between watching the harbor and actually understanding it.
If you're the kind of person who wants that same level of detail about what's happening in other pockets of the island, or you're curious what a home in a neighborhood like this is actually worth once you account for water access, working shoreline, and the infrastructure changes headed its way, John McGarr tracks these shifts neighborhood by neighborhood and is always glad to talk through what they mean for you.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
