At a quiet bend in the South River, where feathery reeds crowd the banks and the tide comes out smelling of mud, a 110-foot boat is moored in a narrow bay.
Its leaves are rusted in places. The deck collapses. Murals and vines climb its bulwarks. Small trees have begun to grow where the stateroom once was.
For years, the ship was mostly a curiosity, seen from above on drones or Google Maps and whispered about in Sayreville bars and online forums.
Then, last fall, it became a court problem.
Matt Dolitsky, a YouTuber who explores abandoned places in New Jersey and New York for his channel Two Feet Outdoors, is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 26 in Sayreville Municipal Court.
The alleged crime of a 55-year-old man? Trespassing, when he decided to paddle out and explore the wrecked yacht.
A video documenting his November 2024 trip has garnered more than 337,000 views — and, months later, a summons 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 tiny little hole and wonder how it got there.”
Dolitsky’s videos are generally quiet, almost meditative. He glides through waterways and climbs decaying structures, recounting what he sees. His fans describe them as calm, the kind of vlogs you might watch while getting ready for bed.
In the yacht video, he kayaks aboard during low tide. He climbs onto its weathered dock, crawls through the brush and shimmies on the deck, marveling at its scale and condition.
“Nobody knows I’m here,” Dolitsky says at one point, his shadow cast in a stack of smoke as a truck rumbles off in the distance.
What he didn’t expect was a notice that appeared in his mailbox six months later, warning that someone had filed a trespass complaint against him in municipal court.
“I was kind of shocked,” Dolitsky said. “I was thinking, ‘How is this possible?’
The complaint, filed last June, alleges that on Nov. 1, 2024, Dolitsky kayaked onto the property, trespassing on private land and boarding a yacht.
Trespassing in Sayreville is a petty disorderly person offense, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.
The charges were filed by Kirsten Kortbawi, who lives on the yacht and owns property in the surrounding area. Much of the space is taken up by Viking Terminal, an industrial park that rents to commercial businesses.
Kortbawi did not respond to a request for comment from NJ.com.
In a previous statement to the Home News Tribune, she said “no trespassing” signs have not been posted around the property for decades and Dolitsky’s own video showed him approaching the dock from the river.
“Significantly, the yellow and black ‘no trespassing’ sign is shown in his YouTube video as he approaches the dock in his kayak,” Kortbawi said.
Dolitsky disputes that account, saying he saw no such signage 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’ll guarantee it once they’ve indicated.”
Updating his viewers on the case in a video he posted in August, he returns to the dock, where a ‘no trespassing’ sign can actually be seen affixed to a post.
The same post is empty in his original November 2024 video.
‘Stinkersville’
The yacht has a longer, more mysterious history than the case surrounding it.
The vessel is listed on Google Maps as the Blue Jacket, a luxury motor vessel built in the Netherlands in the 1950s.
It is not clear exactly when it was broken up or brought to Viking Terminal.
Brian Swider, who leased space in the terminal from 1990 to 1995 for his concrete company, remembers the property’s owners — Kortbawi’s parents, Peter and Donna Roehsler — once had grand plans to restore the yacht to its former glory.
“He was on his boat,” Swider said of Peter Roehsler, who died in 2011. Donna died in 2023.
“They’ve had a crew of people working on that yacht for as long as I’ve been there,” Swider continued. “They poured 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 that Hall’s engine mounts were “beyond repair.”
“That’s when he put it in the bay there,” Swider said. “I lost track when I went out.”
A view of the top 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 a popular 2020 video, now deleted, two men kayak directly into it, stepping onto the deck across a makeshift gangway of PVC pipes.
They explore the yacht, not yet covered in graffiti, and comment on the stagnant water and the smell of decay.
“Oh man, this thing is Stinkersville,” says one.
On another rooftop, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Titanic,” arms outstretched: “I’m king of the world!”
Neither man has been charged with a crime, and neither responded to requests for comment.
It’s unclear whether Kortbawi knew about this video or others like it, and if so, why he didn’t file a complaint 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 professional firm last November, according to her LinkedIn profile, which lists her current employment as owner of Viking Terminal Holdings, LLC.
“How is it possible that a famous lawyer has an abandoned yacht sitting abandoned in a ditch?” Dolitsky asks in an update video posted on his channel last year.
sinking ship
New Jersey has long had a problem with abandoned boats. But Sayreville’s yacht doesn’t meet that definition.
That’s because Kortbawi owns both the ship and the waterway on which it’s molding.
A public relations firm hired 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 could pose an environmental hazard to its surroundings, some said. Dolitsky believes it does, pointing to visible holes in the hull and flooded engine compartments.
“When the water comes in and goes out, I can only imagine that all the fluids in that yacht leaked at some point,” he said. “Diesel, oil, things like that.”
Kortbawi told the Home News Tribune that those claims were unfounded as inspections by county and municipal agencies found no oil leaks.
A spokesman for the state Motor Vehicle Commission, the agency that handles the derelict vessels, did not respond to a request for comment.
A view of the main deck of the yacht in Sayreville.
The case slowly unraveled after Dolitsky received his summons in June. A mediation session with Kortbawi was scheduled before his probable cause hearing, but it collapsed almost immediately, he says.
“I was willing to mediate — that’s why I was there,” he said. “But if one party doesn’t want to arbitrate, that goes to litigation.”
Dolitsky has no other contact with Kortbawi, whose motivations are unknown.
“It’s not like, if they fine me, he gets the money,” he said. “I don’t know what she gets out of it. Maybe she wants to make an example of me.”
In New Jersey’s municipal courts, anyone with direct knowledge of a violation can file a civil complaint, and the court can hold a probable cause hearing to decide whether the case will proceed.
Sayreville police were not involved in the allegations, nor did they investigate the complaint, according to department spokesman Lt. James Novak.
It’s unclear how much the case is costing Sayreville taxpayers to prosecute Dolitsky.
A borough spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did John Krenzel, the municipal prosecutor handling the case.
The process of being fired has affected Dolitsky.
“Who wants an accusation on their head?” He said. “Especially on something that, in my opinion, seems so small.”
Online, the case has become a minor cause célèbre 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’s not interested in controversy.
“I pay attention to what I do and where I go,” he said. “I try to leave places better than I found them. I’m not out there trying to cause harm.”
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