Cheap roller
I can pretty much assure you that you will rue the day you try to put a cheap roller furler on your boat. It may appear to be a simply gizmo, but it's a fairly critical piece of gear given that it's on your head stay and takes a lot of strain when in use. Cutting a corner here just isn't something you want to do. Steve's right; $1,000 won't get you much in the first place. I've installed both Harken and ProFurl and they are pretty straight forward installs. If you are going to do the work yourself, it will take you about 6 hrs to do it, if you've never done it before and have read the instructions carefully and laid out your work. You will need at least one person to help you and you can install it with the mast up. Plan on installing a new head stay with the new roller; it's just a lot easier than retrofitting your existing stay and you get a totally new stay at the same time. Bottom line, on a 30-34' boat, figure $1,600-$1,800 for the roller; $150-$200 for the new stay and terminals...I'd recommend Stay-Locs...; $1,600 for a new 135% genoa headsail on a 30' or so boat, maybe $500-$600 to get your existing headsail recut and you want an extra luff pad for the furler. Toss in about $300 for some convenience goodies like fairleads for the furler line and maybe a rope cam. If you have a rigger do it, figure in $300-$500 for the installation. My opinion is that this is not a project where you want to cut any price corners on the installation of the roller and head stay. Maybe trim it by recutting your existing jib. But, I've seen this done on the cheaps before and it'll be nothing but problems in the long run.
