Boating, Fishing, and Travel Information for Port Washington, NY

Port Washington is an affluent hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2010 Census, the community population was 15,846.

Port Washington is a hamlet within and directly governed by the town of North Hempstead. With rolling hills and a serpentine coastline in the northwest corner of Nassau County, Port Washington is studded with marinas, parks, yacht clubs and golf courses. The Great Neck peninsula is across Manhasset Bay to the west; Manhasset and Plandome are to the south; Roslyn lies southeast. Besides an unincorporated area of the Town of North Hempstead, Port Washington is home to four incorporated villages: Baxter Estates, Manorhaven, Port Washington North and Sands Point, plus part of the village of Flower Hill.

According to Forbes, Port Washington is ranked as the 418th wealthiest place in the United States as of 2017, with a median home sale price of $1,191,865.

In the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck, at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck Estates, which is probably Great Neck’s greatest claim to fame. It was a modest house, not dissimilar to that of Nick, the protagonist of his novel, The Great Gatsby. It is said that Fitzgerald modeled West Egg, the fictional town in which Nick lived, next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, after Great Neck (specifically Kings Point), for its epitome of nouveau riche gaudiness, atmosphere, and lifestyle. He modeled East Egg, the town where Daisy and Tom lived, after Great Neck’s eastern neighbor Sands Point, which is part of Port Washington.

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Port Washington is a village on the south side of a shoal bight about 1.2 miles southeastward of Plum Point. An apartment complex on Toms Point, 0.9 mile east of Plum Point, is prominent. Depths of about 8 feet can be carried in the buoyed approach from the lighted buoy off Plum Point to the docks at Port Washington, thence through the unmarked channel along the east side of the bight to its north end northeastward of Toms Point. In 1979, shoaling to 1½ feet was reported in the approach to the wharves east of Toms Point in about 40°50’04″N., 73°42’17″W. In 1981, depths of 5 feet were reported on the north side of the town dock with 2 and 4 feet on the west and south sides, respectively. Depths at the other wharves are reported to range from 4 to 9 feet.

There are extensive small-craft facilities at Port Washington and to the eastward and westward of Toms Point at Manorhaven. Port Washington’s Bay Constable monitors VHF-FM channels 9 and 16 from the town dock.

Manhasset Bay, between Barker Point and Hewlett Point, affords excellent shelter for vessels of about 12 feet or less draft, and is much frequented by yachts in the summer. The depths in the outer part of the bay range from 12 to 17 feet, and 7 to 12 feet in the inner part inside Plum Point. The extreme south end of the bay is shallow with extensive mudflats. Depths of about 6 to 2 feet can be taken through a natural channel almost to the head of the bay. A 5 mph speed limit is enforced.

Hewlett Point (40°50.3’N., 73°45.2’W.) is on the west side of the entrance to Manhasset Bay. A boulder reef, mostly bare at low water and marked by a lighted buoy at its northern end, extends about 0.2 mile northward from the point.

Plum Point is a low spit extending southward from the eastern shore about 0.6 mile southward of Barker Point. A seasonal lighted entrance buoy is about 150 yards southward of Plum Point. The bight eastward of Plum Point is shoal.