Learning to fly intro post

I got one of these kits back in the late 70's and finished the build around 1981 or so. I didn't want to get it full of sand and salt water so decided to take it out for my first flight right off a 400 ft high slope launch. I did this in the spring on a nice fairly warm and reasonably stable day with a very light breeze straight up launch. I had handled it a couple times in a light breeze on the flat but really hadn't gotten any feel for what the rudders would do and certainly had no idea what pitch control would be like. I had it rigged with a hammock harness suspended between the front of the cage and the back of the cage just to make sure I wasn't going to fall out of the thing before I reached an LZ point. The LZ was about 30 square miles of short grass with a few fences here and there so I had no plan to attempt to turn it and was just going to fly it straight until I reached the ground. As well as my memory serves me, the launch was effortless and for a second or two I was flying on a steady glide. But, lo!, was that lift I felt?, what to do, what to do.....I guess I'll just push out a bit. The next few seconds went something like this.....I probably shifted myself back in the cage several inches (as I'd been used to with my Eipper Cumulus VB) and found myself in a sudden whip stall that broke what felt like past vertical as I frantically plunged myself forward in the cage to get my airspeed back and then slam myself back for an abrupt stall/flare before hitting the ground. The slope on this launch profile steepens shortly after takeoff so I had enough air to gain some fairly serious momentum. I hit hard but was lucky in that this grassy hillside had a huge bush of poison oak and blackberries that I came down on and it broke the impact allowing me to walk away "relatively" uninjured.....i.e., I was still alive. The glider, however, was damaged to a point where I broke one leading edge and bent all the panel spars from the cage out to the tips which meant I was going to be completely de-rigging and recovering (a major, major re-build). So, my first lesson: either I did something wrong in building it, or the glider responds to pitch input much differently than my flex wing. I'm guessing the later. The only factor that I could think of that would make the pitch sensitivity unreasonable was the ease with which you can flatten the airfoil shape during the covering process. I don't know squat about aerodynamics (or anything else for that matter....) but am willing to guess that when you do a poor job of covering, one common thing is to pull too much tension on the fabric in the chord wise direction thereby resulting in what can be severe pull down between the ribs. In the extreme this would be like having a flat sheet for the wings which, I can imagine, might have some nasty stall characteristics. OK, so this was my confession. So, now what? I'm ready to try again but am a lot less worried about getting sand and salt water on the glider if I can a) keep from killing myself and b) stay out of the shop this summer. I have watched the training film several times and have gotten all I am likely to from it. I am interested in hearing about what other ER pilots went through in learning to fly these gliders, especially how to keep from damaging them in the process. What I intend to do from what I've learned up to this point is:

1. give up the inland idea and just go to the beach.

2. don't practice in anything over a 5mph breeze for the first dozen or so ground skims.

3. do the first flights on a shallow slope

4. practice with the rudders on the flat in a breeze before I even attempt to try a ground skim

Basically, common sense stuff I was too stupid to follow the first time around.

OK, time to hear from others.......