In a sinking economy, one Jersey commuter has found a way to stay afloat – by paddling across the Hudson in a kayak to his Manhattan teaching job.
Each weekday morning, while his neighbors head for buses and ferries, Sean Patch, a 29-year-old high school math teacher, unties the 17-foot kayak he keeps at a dock on the Weehawken waterfront. Pulling on an orange life jacket, he grabs a foghorn, a safety light and a drybag holding his laptop and his work clothes, and heads out into the river. When he reaches Pier 66, he gets dressed for work, picks up his bicycle and pedals to Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities on West 18th Street.
“It adds a little adventure to the day,” says Patch, who reverses the commute at the day’s end, winding up at the Lincoln Harbor Yacht Club in Weehawken, where he lives on a 30-year-old sailboat he docks for $400 a month.
A former Wall Street trader, Patch started boating to work this past summer as a money-saving measure, after the ferry he used to ride to Manhattan nearly doubled its $15-a-day fare.
While it might seem like an extreme way to save a few dollars, it made perfect sense to Patch, a lifelong seafarer who grew up near the water in Maine, and arrived in New York City via sailboat when he moved here to work in finance in 2002. And he’s come to relish the daily voyages.
“With a commute like mine you don’t need coffee,” he says.
A scruffy, enthusiastic sort, Patch quit finance after several years to become an Outward Bound instructor, then spent 18 months on a sailing trip to the Bahamas before eventually becoming a teacher through the nonprofit New York City Teaching Fellows. He also cofounded his own nonprofit, Hudson River Community Sailing, whose goal is to make the elite sport of sailing accessible to New Yorkers (and whose office provides his morning changing room). He’s now program director of the year-old organization, where he’s lured some of his students to get a taste of the sea.
“They’re able to overcome their fears and get out of their comfort zones,” he says. “They build confidence.”
That’s something any aspiring kayak commuter is likely to need, given early morning traffic that includes ferries, oil rigs and massive cruise ships. Being seen in his tiny vessel is a concern, though Patch, who carries a white light and follows the “rules of the road” signal system, says his worst mishap so far was bumping into a log.
Those who do notice him sometimes react with bemusement like the commercial tugboat captain who circled his finger around his ear to express his opinion that Patch is off his rocker. Even his community of houseboat-living buddies at the yacht club think his routine is a little odd.
But neither that nor the occasional rough seas deter Patch and neither does the coming of the cold weather.
“My goal is to make it through the winter,” he says. “I love New York, but I can’t be landlocked.”