In San Francisco there is an elite group of men who commute twelve miles to their jobs by motor launch, then sit in the roomy cabin of a beautiful two-masted schooner reading, playing chess, watching TV, eating, sometimes sleeping, until it is time to go to the office. The office is the bridge of a ship—freighter, tanker or liner—headed for the Golden Gate Bridge.

These men are the bar pilots. They are a salty group of mariners who know the underwater contours lying off the city of San Francisco as well as they know the palms of their seamed hands. For, to them is entrusted the mission of guiding millions of tons of shipping safely across the great, submerged sand bar that forms a barrier across the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

Q. Underline the sentence which best supports the conclusion that the bar pilots are well qualified.