A YouTuber explored a rotting yacht in a N.J. creek. Now he’s being put on trial.

A YouTuber explored a rotting yacht in a N.J. creek. Now he’s being put on trial.

AJ McDougall

Tue, February 10, 2026 at 2:57 PM UTC

8 min read

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On a quiet bend of the South River, where feathery reeds crowd the shoreline and the mud smells faintly sour when the tide slips out, a 110-foot yacht sits wedged in a narrow creek.

Its hull is rusted through in places. The deck sags. Graffiti and vines climb its bulwarks. Small trees have begun to grow in what were once staterooms.

For years, the vessel was mostly a curiosity, spotted from above by drone or on Google Maps and whispered about in Sayreville bars and online forums.

Then, last fall, it became a courtroom problem.

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 55-year-old’s alleged crime? Trespassing, when he decided to paddle out and explore the wrecked yacht.

His November 2024 video documenting the trip has drawn more than 337,000 views — and, months later, a summons accusing him of unlawfully entering private property.

“My focus was on the boat,” Dolitsky said in an interview with NJ.com. “You see this massive boat in this tiny little creek and wonder how it got there.”

Dolitsky’s videos are typically quiet, almost meditative. He glides through waterways and climbs into decaying structures, narrating what he sees. His fans describe them as calming, the type of vlogs you can watch while getting ready for bed.

In the yacht video, he kayaks up to the vessel during low tide. He climbs onto its weathered dock, crawls through brush and shimmies onto the deck, marveling at its scale and condition.

“Nobody has a clue that I’m over here,” Dolitsky says at one point, his shadow cast against a smokestack as a truck beeps somewhere in the distance.

What he did not expect was the notice that appeared in his mailbox six months later, warning that someone had filed a trespassing complaint against him in municipal court.

“I was kind of shocked,” Dolitsky said. “I was thinking, ‘How is that even possible?’”

The complaint, filed last June, alleges that on Nov. 1, 2024, Dolitsky kayaked to the property, crossed onto private land and boarded the yacht.

Trespassing is a petty disorderly persons offense in Sayreville, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.

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The charge was filed by Kersten Kortbawi, who owns the property the yacht sits on and 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 prior statement to the Home News Tribune, she said “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 is shown in his YouTube video as he approached the dock on his kayak,” Kortbawi said.

Dolitsky disputes that account, saying he saw no such signage at the time and believes additional signs were installed afterward.

“I didn’t see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs or anything saying, ‘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 kayaks back to the dock, where a ‘No Trespassing’ sign can indeed be seen affixed to a post.

That same post is bare 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’s not clear exactly when it fell into disrepair or was brought to Viking Terminal.

Brian Swider, who rented space at 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 into 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 dumped 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 the hull’s engine mounts were “beyond repair.”

“That’s when he put it up in the creek there,” Swider said. “I lost track after I moved out.”

A view of the top deck of the yacht in Sayreville.

Since then, the yacht remained largely — but not entirely — undisturbed.

Other YouTubers have documented themselves aboard the vessel in recent years. In one popular 2020 video, now deleted, two men kayak directly up to it, crossing a makeshift gangway of PVC pipes and stepping onto the deck.

They explore the yacht, 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,” arms flung wide: “I’m the king of the world!”

Neither man has been charged with a crime, and neither responded to requests for comment.

It’s unclear if Kortbawi was aware of this video or others like it, and if so, why she didn’t 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 commercial firm last November, according to her LinkedIn profile, which lists her current employment as owner of Viking Terminal Holdings, LLC.

“How is it possible a prominent attorney has a derelict yacht sitting abandoned in a creek?” Dolitsky asks in an update video posted to 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.

That’s because Kortbawi owns both the vessel and the waterway in which it’s moldering.

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 rusting and rotting may 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 goes 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 leakage.

A view of the main deck of the yacht in Sayreville.

The case has unfolded slowly since Dolitsky received his summons in June. A mediation session with Kortbawi preceded 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 mediate, then it goes to trial.”

Dolitsky has had no other 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 she’s getting out of it. Maybe she wants to make an example out of me.”

In New Jersey’s municipal courts, anyone with firsthand knowledge of a violation can file a citizen complaint, and the court may hold a probable cause hearing to decide if the case moves forward.

Sayreville police were not involved in the charge, nor did they investigate the complaint, according to Lt. James Novak, a department spokesperson.

It’s unclear how much the case is costing Sayreville taxpayers to prosecute Dolitsky.

A spokesperson for the borough did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did John Krenzel, the municipal prosecutor handling the case.

The drawn-out process has taken a toll on Dolitsky.

“Who wants to have charges looming over their head?” he said. “Especially over something that, in my opinion, seems so petty.”

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 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.”

Read the original article on NJ.com. Add NJ.com as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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