You get much better grip with bare feet in the rig than you can with shoes. Bare feet are good on bare teak, not so good on varnish. I still go barefoot on my boat when I'm cruising but I wear shoes when I race, mostly because there are a lot of people jumping around and it hurts less when I get stepped on. I agree with the black safety walk strips, they are fairly kind on bare feet and if you don't like them you can always remove them.