In a quiet bend of the South River, where feather reeds line the shore and the mud smells a little sour when the tide slips out, a 110-foot yacht sits wedged in a narrow cove.
Its hull is rusted through in places. The deck was lowered. Graffiti and vines climb over her bali. Young trees began to grow in what were once staterooms.
For years, the vessel was mostly a curiosity, noticed from above by a drone or on Google Maps and whispered about in Sayreville bars and online forums.
Then, last fall, it became a problem in the courtroom.
Matt Dolitsky, a YouTuber who explores abandoned places in New Jersey and New York for his channel Two Feet Outdoors, is scheduled to go on trial Feb. 26 in Sayreville Municipal Court.
The alleged crime of 55 years? Ruin, when he decided to paddle out and explore the wrecked yacht.
His November 2024 video documenting the trip attracted more than 337,000 views — and, months later, a citation charging him with trespassing on private property.
“My focus was on the boat,” Dolitsky said in an interview with NJ.com. “You see this huge boat in this little creek and you wonder how it got there.”
Dolitsky’s videos are typically quiet, almost meditative. He glides through waterways and climbs decaying structures, recounting what he sees. His fans describe them as calming, the kind of vlogs you can watch while getting ready for bed.
In the yacht video, he kayaks up to the vessel at low tide. He climbs onto his weather dock, crawls through brush and throws himself onto the deck, marveling at his scale and condition.
“Nobody has a clue I’m here,” Dolitsky says at one point, his shadow cast against the chimney as a truck rumbles by somewhere in the distance.
What he didn’t expect was the notice that appeared in his mailbox six months later, warning that someone had filed a trespass complaint against him in municipal court.
“I was shocked,” Dolitsky said. “I was thinking, ‘How is this possible?'”
The complaint, filed last June, alleges that on November 1, 2024, Dolitsky kayaked onto the property, crossed private land and boarded the yacht.
Unloading is a misdemeanor disorderly persons offense in Sayreville, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.
The accusation was brought by Kersten Kortbawi, who is the owner of the property on which the yacht and the surrounding area. Much of the space is taken up by Viking Terminal, an industrial park that leases to commercial businesses.
Kortbawi did not respond to a request for comment from NJ.com.
In a prior statement to the Home News Tribune, she said that “No Trespassing” signs have been posted around the property for decades and that Dolitsky’s own video shows one as he approached the dock from the river.
“Importantly, the yellow and black ‘No Trespassing’ sign appears in his YouTube video as he approached the dock on his kayak,” said Kortbawi.
Dolitsky disputes that account, saying he saw no such signs at the time and believes additional signs were installed later.
“I didn’t see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs or anything that said, ‘Private Property,'” he said. “I guarantee after the fact they put up signs.”
In a video he posted in August updating his viewers on the case, he heads back to the dock, where indeed a ‘No Trespassing’ sign can be seen affixed to a post.
That same post is revealed in his original November 2024 video.
‘Stinkersville’
The yacht has a longer and more mysterious history than the case surrounding it.
The vessel is listed on Google Maps as the Blue Jacket, a luxury motor ship built in the Netherlands in the 1950s.
It is not clear exactly when she fell into disaster or was brought to Viking Terminal.
Brian Swider, who leased terminal space from 1990 to 1995 for his concrete company, remembers the property’s owners — Kortbawi’s parents, Peter and Donna Roehsler — once had big plans to return the yacht to its former glory.
“He was in his boats,” Swider said of Peter Roehsler, who died in 2011. Donna died in 2023.
“They had a crew of people working on that yacht the whole time I was down there,” Swider continued. “They put a lot of time and money into it. To see it the way it is now – it’s a shame.”
Swider said the Roehslers ordered new engine parts, but later discovered the hull engine mounts were “beyond repair.”
“That’s when I put it in the creek there,” Swider said. “I lost track after I went away.”
View of the upper deck of the yacht in Sayreville.
Since then, the yacht has remained largely — but not entirely — undisturbed.
Other YouTubers have documented themselves aboard the ship in recent years. In one popular 2020 video, now deleted, two men row the kayak directly towards him, cross a makeshift walkway of PVC pipes and climb onto the deck.
They explore the yacht, which is not yet covered in graffiti, and remark on the smell of stagnant water and decay.
“Oh man, this thing is Stinkersville,” one says.
The other poses on the roof like Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Titanic”, with arms outstretched: “I am the king of the world!”
Neither man has been charged with a crime, nor did he respond to requests for comment.
It is not clear whether Kortbawi knew about this video or others like it, and if so, why she did not file complaints in those cases.
Kortbawi is a civil litigation attorney and sits on the board of trustees of the Middlesex County Bar Association.
She left her trading firm last November, according to her LinkedIn profile, which lists her current job as owner of Viking Terminal Holdings, LLC.
“How is it possible for a prominent lawyer to have a stranded yacht abandoned in a creek?” Dolitsky asks in an update video posted on his channel late last year.
A sinking ship
New Jersey has long had a problem with abandoned boats. But the yacht in Sayreville probably doesn’t meet that definition.
This is because Kortbawi owns both the vessel and the waterway in which it is moulding.
A public relations firm retained by the Borough of Sayreville told Patch last month that the yacht “is not abandoned” and “is owned by a private company.”
Still, its rust and decay can pose an environmental risk to its surroundings, some say. Dolitsky believes it does, pointing to visible holes in the hull and flooded engine compartments.
“When the water comes in and out, I can only imagine all the fluids that were in that yacht at some point leaked out,” he said. “Diesel, oil, things like that.”
Kortbawi told the Home News Tribune that those claims are baseless, noting that inspections by county and municipal agencies found no oil leaks.
A spokesman for the state Motor Vehicle Commission, the agency that handles derelict vessels, did not respond to requests for comment.
A view of the main deck of the yacht in Sayreville.
The case has developed slowly since Dolitsky received his summons in June. A mediation session with Kortbawi preceded his probable cause hearing, but collapsed almost immediately, he says.
“I was ready to mediate – that’s why I was there,” he said. “But if one party does not want to mediate, then it goes to trial.”
Dolitsky had no further contact with Kortbawi, whose motivations remain unknown.
“It’s not like, if they fine me, she gets the money,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re getting out of it. Maybe you want to make an example of me.”
In New Jersey’s municipal courts, anyone with direct knowledge of a violation can file a citizen complaint, and the court can hold a probable cause hearing to decide whether the case will move forward.
Sayreville police were not involved in the accusation, nor did they investigate the complaint, according to Lt. James Novak, department spokesman.
It is unclear how much the case is costing Sayreville taxpayers to prosecute Dolitsky.
A spokesman for the borough did not respond to a request for comment. Not even John Krenzel, the municipal prosecutor who was handling the case.
The protracted process took its toll on Dolitsky.
“Who wants to have charges looming over their heads?” he said. “Especially on something that, in my opinion, seems so small.”
Online, the case has become a famous minor lawsuit among fans of “urban exploration” videos and creators who see public waterways and abandoned structures as fair game.
Dolitsky, whose YouTube channel is his full-time career, insists he is not interested in controversy.
“I care about what I do and where I go,” he said. “I try to leave places better than I find them. I’m not out there trying to cause harm.”
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