Don't Give Up.

Your first paddle is not an indication of how the boat performs or how you'll feel about it after a while.

"Tippy" boats are always tippiest when they're standing still, so ignore how tippy it seems and just paddle it without stopping. Keep your hips loose. If your boat floats fine without you in it, it will float fine with you in it, you just need to know where to keep your center of balance over the kayak to make it float like it does without you in it. Having as thin a seat as possible will help with this. If it capsizes when it's floating by itself, THEN it's probably too tippy...

My first first (not just the first that I built, although I built it) was a narrow SOF built from one of the books and not from a plan, and it has some design quirks. I was terrified when paddling it for a long time, but I kept at it and now it feels fine. Greenland kayak historian Harvey Golden has written about his first replica being difficult to paddle and spending a year paddling with one hand on the shore.

He did it, I did it, and you will too.

That's the pep talk. Make sure you've got a good spray skirt, pfd, pump, and know how to roll, then go paddle a lot.

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