Danielle L.
Yelp
This review is for a day trip from Hyannis to Nantucket going to Surfside beach. Surfside is a really nice beach, easy to reach from the ferry on the Nantucket bus system, with a good bathhouse and snack shack.
Take the Surfside bus to the beach for $2 - just a 5 min walk from where the hyline ferry docks. The bus schedule shows that it has lots of stops along the way, but if there's no one waiting at those stops, the bus keeps going and you'll wind up at the beach in 10-15 minutes. The bus drops you off at the small snack shack / bath house. The ferry landed at 12:20 and by the time we got off, we had to go directly to the bus stop to catch the 12:40 bus with only a couple minutes to spare - there's no time to grab anything in town unless you get there early enough to wait for the next bus.
The bath house is small, but decent. There are two outside showers to rinse off. The shower water is really cold - colder than the ocean. The bathroom has two private changing rooms so it's easy to change into your bathing suit when you get there and change back into street clothes after a day at the beach.
Around the back of the snack shack you can rent beach chairs and beach umbrellas. A chair costs $8 with a $10 deposit and an umbrella costs $10 with a $10 deposit - cash only. In addition, by the time we got to the beach it was 1pm and they only had 1 broken beach chair left, but plenty of umbrellas. So if you plan too rent a chair, you'll need to get there before noon.
There's a separate listing for a snack shack, but I'll comment here that it was pretty good for a beach snack shack. I had a $10 grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato and thick slices of avocado - it was great. The cost of chips was a little high at $3 and the homemade lemonade was also a little pricey relative to the cost of the chicken sandwich.
Finally, the beach was great. Not as crowded as going to coast guard beach. The water at Surfside was warm and clear. A great day trip from Hyannis.
If I had to do it again, I'd bring a small chair - the kind that rolls up, some snacks, rent an umbrella, and buy my lunch there. And knowing that there is a good place for changing have a full set of street clothes all in small back pack. I'd also get an earlier ferry so I would have time to pick up snacks and drinks at the Stop & Shop on the way to the bus stop, but you could also go directly to the bus stop and get your food at the beach.