OK - don't get me wrong - I love my new (well 2009) AI. But I hate the seat. In particular, I hate the insidious way the straps slowly slip until you find yourself practically laying on your back.
Yeah, I know that tucking the straps back into the adjuster-buckle thing will stop this, but I like to move the seat to different positions ocassionally, because my back gets tired of not being supported properly by the too-low back and in-the-wrong-place "lumbar support." As you might guess, I'm not small - 6'1" and 200 and mumbledy-mumble pounds. But this is no excuse for the clearly-inadequate engineering of the straps. I took a picture of my starboard strap after a total of 9 outings, not sure if you can see it, but it's lost about 3 of its 9 lives:
Years ago I built a sit-in kayak whose seat back was adjuted by nothing more than a length of light line and a V-cleat, which worked fine, so I went looking for similar solution. This is what I came up with:
This is made up of a length of 2.8mm line and a "Line lok" line tensioner made by the clamcleat people. They're quite strong and cost less than a buck:
I've tried it out and it works great. It's not as easy to adjust as I had hoped (you have to disengage it to move it in either direction), but it's still easier than the straps. The followig link shows how they work:
http://www.duckworksbbs.com/hardware/cleats/line-lok/index.htm