The city of Duluth demands only the best. It wasn’t good enough for the town to be located on a Great Lake; it also insisted on being on the shores of the one named Superior.

Striving for the best has enabled Duluth to hold their biennial Festival of Sail. My wife and I are enchanted by the romance and adventure of old-fashioned sailing ships, so we motored to Duluth to swash some buckle.

The tall sailboats looked like prickly caterpillars when they were moored with their sails stowed. But when they were on the harbor under full sail, they were butterflies, floating gracefully and silently, powered only by the wind. Noisy jet skis, powered by gasoline, darted among the sailboats like buzzing, bothersome mosquitoes.

The festival included a high-diving contest. I couldn’t see what diving had to do with tall ships other than they both involve heights and water. I guess Festival organizers thought, “Why not?”

The daredevil divers scaled a tower that soared 66 feet above the water. I overheard a bystander say, “This is nothing for these guys. They usually jump from 90 feet.” Shiver me timbers!

A quadcopter drone followed each diver as he or she plummeted artfully toward the water. It was a ballet of seemingly impossible midair maneuvers. The divers did a great job too.

The best dives ended in a kerplunk akin to one that would be made by dropping a marble. After watching several dives, I turned to my wife and said, “I bet I could do that.”

“But you can’t even swim!”

“I didn’t say that I could do it more than once.”

I took a walking tour of the Sundew, a Coast Guard cutter that was built in 1944 and remained in service until 2004. The Sundew was a buoy tender, which sounds similar to what you might call a person who babysits male children.

The line for the Sundew tour was long and moved glacially. This gave me ample time to chat with a retired Coast Guard guy who was helping with the tourist herding. I asked the old Coastie if he had any dramatic seafaring stories he could share. He did.

“We were on a cutter out in the middle of the Pacific when a rogue wave hit us,” he began. “The wave was higher than that uppermost rigging,” he said, pointing at the top of the Sundew, indicating a height that exceeded four stories.

“The wave rolled us over to 63 degrees and cracked the hull. We were 400 miles from Hawaii and 1,200 miles from Alaska. We had cement aboard that would cure in saltwater, so I ordered the men to stuff the crack with it. The shipbuilders weren’t very happy with us when got back to port.”

Totally awed, I replied, “But you kept the boat off the bottom.”

“Yep. We kept her off the bottom.”

Another riveting nautical conversation took place on The Pride of Baltimore II, a 150-foot-long schooner. One of her sailors was a young guy named Christopher who had a posh Buckinghamshire accent. He was explaining the ship’s operations to us clueless landlubbers when someone asked about the ship’s masts.

“They’re made of laminated Douglas fir,” Christopher said. “The original masts were trees. One day some years ago, a gust of wind came up and broke the bowsprit. This caused the foremast to snap off and hit the main mast, which also broke. The ship was completely de-masted.”

Where did this happen?

“Off the coast of France,” Christoper replied. “Not an ideal situation.”

The English have such a wondrous talent for understatement.

I picked up a couple of new nautical terms during that conversation. They included “cathead,” which has nothing to do with kitty noggins, and “donkey engine,” which does not involve a small, sturdy equine.

After a long day of viewing tall ships, I wound down by wandering the marina next to our hotel and perusing the modern watercraft. There were humungous pleasure boats that probably cost more than our farm, and vessels that bristled with fishing equipment and all manner of electronic doodads. I can’t imagine what the cost per pound of Lake Superior fish would be if you factored in all the boat-related expenses.

Some of the boats had clever names such as Nauti-Tyme, Significant Other, Blanck Check, and License To Chill. The most self-explanatory one was Get The Net.

Even though we’re landlubbers, my wife and I took great pleasure from simply sitting on our hotel room’s patio and looking out at the tranquil waters of the harbor.

In conclusion, we had a very nice time in Duluth. You might even say it was superior.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.