Love on the Rock: Sailing into a Shelter Island life

Is it a good or bad idea to ask your college buddy about dating his co-worker?

It’s 2006 and the inquirer in this scene is Scott Enstine of Water Mill, with a question for his best friend, Greg Nissen, director of Camp Quinipet. Scott wants to ask Greg’s good friend and colleague, Lisa Krekeler, on a date.

Let’s meet the characters. Lisa grew up in Guilderland, N.Y., just outside Albany. Her mom, Patti, is from Smithtown and her dad, Paul, is from Bellmore: two Long Islanders in love with the water.

“My grandparents on my dad’s side, Beatrice and George Krekeler, were very involved in the Methodist Church and began coming out to Camp Quinipet in the mid-1950s,” Lisa said. Beatrice led the nature program while George helped out with facilities and maintenance. The Krekelers brought Lisa’s dad and his three siblings out to Shelter Island during the summers.

Quinipet Camp and Retreat Center is a summer camp, retreat and environmental education center founded by the United Methodist Church in 1922. The camp encompasses over 25 pristine acres on the northwest shore of Shelter Island.

In the late 1970s, Lisa’s dad served as Quinipet’s waterfront director. He met Lisa’s mom at SUNY Plattsburgh, and after the couple married, they brought infant Lisa and her sister Debbie out to Quinipet for a week at a time, staying onsite at the camp. Patti volunteered as camp nurse and Paul helped with sailing and facilities.

“I spent my childhood summers at Quinipet and I fell in love with Shelter Island,” Lisa recalled. “It was such a contrast to where I grew up in Albany, where I felt land locked. I always had the idea that I’d love to live here one day.” 

Lisa’s dad, Paul, had learned to sail at Quinipet. “He later loved sailing in Albany in his 14-foot Holder that we would take up to Lake Sacandaga,” Lisa remembered. “Believe it or not, when I was little, I hated sailing. I would cry when the boat keeled over. My mom would distract me with snacks.”

By the time she was 16, though, she developed a love of sailing at Quinipet that remains with her to this day.

The summer before Lisa entered college at the University of Rhode Island, she worked as a lifeguard at Quinipet and ran the Community Sailing Program for the next several summers.

Scott made his way to Shelter Island by way of Water Mill. “My dad says our family has lived on the South Fork since the Revolution,” Scott said. His grandparents once owned Enstine’s Fuel in Southampton and Pulver Gas in Bridgehampton. Scott graduated from Southampton High School. His parents, Wendy and Ray Enstine, now split their time between Southampton and South Carolina.

While a student at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, Scott became friends with Greg Nissen and visited him at Camp Quinipet. “Being on Shelter Island was like stepping back 20 years in time to what the South Fork used to be like,” Scott said.

After college, Scott moved to the Island and lived in an apartment above what used to be the Boltax Gallery, with several Quinipet employees as apartment-mates. “I could walk downstairs to Christopher Downs’ Salon and get a great haircut. It was the best,” Scott said. He worked as a graphic designer for the East Hampton Star, then the Southampton Press.

Lisa remembered that, “The summer before my senior year at URI, Scott started hanging around Quinipet a lot, down by the water. He’d be reading the newspaper while I’d be prepping the boats on Sunday mornings.”

Did Scott bring the paper down to the waterfront in hopes of seeing Lisa? Lots of laughter and a big “Yes!” from both.

The two started talking more and more, and Scott felt the need to ask his friend Greg about the idea of asking out Lisa. “Greg said, ‘You know, she’s a Krekelerrrrrrr.’ Greg knew that Lisa is super organized and structured, a force.” Scott chuckled. “Yeah, Scott is, well, more relaxed and spontaneous,” Lisa winked.

Scott invited Lisa to dinner at The Fifth Season in Greenport. “I didn’t have anything nice to wear because I just had all my sailing clothes,” Lisa said.

The date went well, and they became a couple over the summer, hoping to keep the relationship going when she went back to school. Lisa worried about the distance between Shelter Island and Rhode Island, but Scott would take the Cross Sound Ferry and drive north to see Lisa sail FJs and 420s in her URI sailing team regattas in Narragansett and Boston.

After graduating from URI, Lisa worked at Camp Quinipet and as a lifeguard at the East Hampton YMCA. Soon, wedding plans were in the making. “There was no big proposal, we just knew,” Lisa said.

On a sunny day in September, 2009, Lisa and Scott married at the Quinipet chapel. Lisa’s childhood pastor, Reverend Terry O’Neill of Mckownville United Methodist Church, officiated. The newlyweds shared a kiss on the iconic waterfront red and white gazebo.

”It was a beautiful day with 100 or so friends and family. After the ceremony, we boated over to Sag Harbor to celebrate at B. Smith’s,” Lisa said.

Lisa worked at Piccozzi’s as an office manager and at the Orient Congregational Church Preschool. Living on the Island in the slow days of winter motivated her to make jewelry. This, in combination with her work at the pre-school, inspired her “to instill kindness in my students, so I wrote a book, ‘Emily and the Kindness Bracelet,’” she said.

She crafted her engraved kindness bracelets to accompany the book and used them in her classroom, then sold her book and bracelets on her Etsy site.

Over the years, Scott and Lisa have run many Shelter Island 5K races together and Scott has cheered Lisa on in running two 10Ks. The two love going on long hikes, especially in the mountains of New England.

In October, 2015, the couple’s daughter Adelyn was born, and she was baptized at Quinipet.

It can be isolating to be new parents living on an island, but Lisa recalled, “We were lucky. In our friend group, four of us had babies within a month of each other so we had a built-in play group.”

Lisa and Scott play the “ferry shuffle,” with Adelyn, now eight, attending the Hayground School in Bridgehampton and taking dance classes on the North Fork. They feel lucky to live in a neighborhood where Adelyn can ride her bike and have lemonade stands with her summer friends.

Lisa’s parents bought a home on the Island after Adelyn was born, and they enjoy spending time together and, of course, sailing.

The couple’s best friends are former Olympic sailor Amanda Clark and Greg Nissen, who live in Greenport; their daughters are best friends as well.

At the end of our Saturday interview around the family’s dining table, Adelyn was excited and eager to wrap things up as the family got ready to walk on North Ferry. They were going to meet the Nissens in Greenport for a fun day of roller skating at the Legion.

Looking back on that conversation between Scott and Greg all those years ago, it’s hard to believe there was ever any question.