Sure it would be nice to have self tailors but it's not hard to sail without them.

Given the immense cost delta of self tailors over standard winches I've decided that they are not worth it.

I've been soloing my boat for a decade without self tailing winches.

The biggest change I made for single handing other than adding the autopilot was to move all the halyards and the reefing to the mast and boom.

I know that sounds backwards from what others say but that works well whereas having reefing and halyards in the cockpit has never worked well for me especially when single handing.