lubricating mainsail track

Can't help with the cleaning, but to lubricate use dry silicone spray, available from bike shops for about £4 a can and chandlers for about £6.50 a can. Spray it on the slides and cars quite liberally and it gets carried all the way up. Don't use any oil based product like 3 in 1 or WD40 as they gradually collect grit and make it worse. We used the silicone spray a month ago and the main slides up and down much easier.
 
how about a small piece of old spunge attached to mainsail head,soak in ptfe spray ,pushed into mast track ,hoist / lower mainsail a few times- worked for me!
 
I run a candle up and down the slot at the base of the track, as far as I can reach and then the sail slides carry the wax up the mast as it goes up. Usually one application per season but it leaves no mess so you could do it more often.
 
I had to do this in April when the sliders of my new main /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif were sticking in the track. I took a long length of 5 mm 3 strand line, tied a loop in the end and clipped it to the haliard. I cut a slice off the end of a sponge and spliced it into the line just below the loop, making a sort of pudding shape that gave a good fit in the track, and gave it a good dose of Tesco's silicone furniture polish (35p a can if I remember right). Pulled up to top using haliard and back down with line; another big squirt of polish and repeat several times: excess friction gone.

One point to watch: unless the line is undoubtedly longer than the mast track it's important to tie off its other end. After the haliard shackle is more than 2/3 up, the weight of the descending haliard exceeds the weight of the rising line + friction and the fall, well, falls, whizzing the line up at increasing speed until the shackle collides with the masthead sheave.
 
I made a long slug for my track - about 150mm with tapered ends, and then tack welded a flat on, with hole for halyard and downhaul. Next sewed a piece of soft leather around slug, sprayed heavily with food grade silicon cooking spray, and ran it up and down, repeating liberal coating of spary at each circuit. After numerous washes of leather and applications, it was going up and down a treat. Now I use once in a blue moon to lube (still using food grade silicon) and main goes up and down just fine.
 
I made a frantic grab at it, and fortunately caught it just before the end shot out of reach. (And no, I hadn't measured it - "there's a nice long piece, that should do the job...")
 
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