A rowing shoe system for use by a rower in a racing boat has a footboard adapted to be secured in a boat, a pair of shoe liners and a pair of shoe shells. ; and an aqueous carrier; wherein the composition has a pH of above 4. A processing circuit is coupled to each temporal threat detector and is operable to analyze the detection signal from each detector as a function of time to detect the occurrence of a short-burn threat within the field of view of any of the temporal threat detectors. The optical radiation is chosen to have an appropriate wavelength and sufficient power density, so that the surrounding medium will be changed in the vicinity of at least a part of the peripheral surface area.