Yes, I know that the contest expired a while ago, but I was going through the archives for practice and discovered a solution that beats the submitted winner! I was so stoked that I had to share it. This seemed a better place to do it than a dead results thread... Anyways, take a look!
Thanks to the winner TSchultz [Whose solution had $1364 remaining] for the catcher design. I'm sure it can be tweaked to use $2 less rope, but I'd rather move on to new puzzles than spend an hour working it out.