Some mate's & I have just bought the 2011 model - however I am still waiting on some missing parts so have not yet used mine. (now almost 3 weeks)
One has informed me about a problem with the rudder assembly which caused his tiller to feel sticky and sometimes put so much strain on his control lines that they quickly became very stretched and loose and he feared they might break if he exerted too much force trying to get his rudder to turn correctly.
He is new to the AI and has a lifetime's experience as a motor mechanic.
It wasn't long before he discovered what was causing the problem and came up with a fix.
I examined mine and discovered it had exactly the same problem so have decided to alert all owners of 2011 to check theirs.
Problem: The rudder bungee that locks the rudder down feeds through two holes in the rudder blade. If you look carefully inside these two feed holes whilst turning the rudder, you will see metal fittings. They are simply fence netting clips which have been used to neatly join the two ends of the bungee in a concealed and neat manner. However on both AIs examined so far, they are at times rubbing and putting pressure on the rudder assembly when altering direction.
This is the cause of the sticky tiller and is easy to fix.
Fix: Remove the rudder pin by pinching the split ends and pushing up, making sure to position it so as to clear the two control lines in the top of the pin.
Remove the rudder bungee completely. (I found it easiest just to cut it and replace it with a similar size piece from my spare parts bag.) If you have blunt nosed fencing wire cutters handy, you may be able cut the existing clips and use the original piece of bungy.
Now thread the bungy through the two holes with the join on the outside.
replace the pull tab and join the two ends together. I did this using two fence (wire) netting connectors in a similar manner to the original method. I then concealed this join under the pull tab and stitched it in place with some cotton.
Looks good and feels good! You may be able to join the ends of the bungy cord with wire bag twist ties if you don't have wire netting fence connectors handy.
PS the variation in bungy/bungee spelling is to facilitate variations in regional spelling