Donald Dellis is a Bay Area native, growing up in Redwood City, then residing in SF and now Oakland. He enjoyed dinghy sailing as a kid at summer camp. At a high school job fair, he checked out Cal Maritime Academy and went to see the school, but following his father’s influence, he decided not to attend CMA, a choice he regrets. After college, work got in the way of sailing. Donald has a culinary arts career, is a chef and owned a restaurant in Oakland called Grasshopper, but Covid initiated his unchosen semi-retirement. While he did not embrace that change at the time, Donald is happy now to be semi-retired, and with the kids out of the house he has more time to sail and volunteer.
As an adult, he has been sailing for about 20 years, racing express 27’s and competing in OYRA doublehanded ocean racing. Donald volunteered with USCG AUX for a year, cooking on a boat, and has volunteered with Pegasus Voyages since 2025. A Facebook post encouraged a few of their team to attend a Call of the Sea sail training in March of 2026. He found the training to be inclusive; there was lots of emphasis on safety and learning the station bill. He had never been on a tall ship before and enjoys the steep learning curve of a new skill. He’s been out on the bowsprit, but with a strong respect for heights, and working on increasing his grip strength, he hasn’t yet gone aloft. Crew members have spoken with him about climbing the rig, so he feels he’ll be welcomed when he’s ready.
Donald likes the educational sails and being around kids, learning stuff each day; he enjoys mastering a task–learning all the sails, progressions and flow of sailing on Matthew Turner, knowing where to be at any given time. Working with a larger crew and understanding what’s going on at any given time is much more complex than the other types of sailing he does. The whole purpose is to honor the boat, but also to get kids interested in boats and marine life. Learning the educational program activities and how to interact with the kids is another facet of “learning the ropes” and is equally engaging and important to Donald.
Donald feels the crewmembers and captains go out of their way to support him. He gets off the boat and feels like he should be saying thank you to Call of the Sea!