Patch ’02 Boats to Work

Sean Patch ’02 knows how to beat the morning rush—he paddles across the Hudson River to his Manhattan teaching job in a kayak.

The New York Post caught up with Patch, a former Wall Street trader who started boating to work this past summer to save money after the cost of a ferry ride nearly doubled.

“Patch, a 29-year-old high school math teacher, unties the 17-foot kayak he keeps at a dock on the Weehawken waterfront,” said the Post. 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,'”Patch told the Post.

He reverses the commute at the day’s end, winding up at a yacht club, where he lives on a 30-year-old sailboat he docks for $400 a month.

Patch is no stranger to life on the water. When he left his home state of Maine for New York, he arrived on a sailboat. He spent 18 months on a sailing trip to the Bahamas before becoming a teacher through the nonprofit New York City Teaching Fellows. He also co-founded his own nonprofit, Hudson River Community Sailing, dedicated to making the sport of sailing accessible to more New Yorkers.

Undeterred by river traffic or occasional rough water, he told the Post that his goal was to make it through the winter.