efficient with header space

I like WordPress, but most themes waste a lot of vertical space. This is a drawback in a time where widescreen is the only screen you can get. Hardware manufacturers seem to think that the only thing we do with computers all day is watching HD movies. In the meantime software manufacturers chock up our screens with toolbars and banners. The consequence of the widescreen craze in WordPress is that you have to scroll down after 1 or 2 posts.
This theme has a very nice solution by putting the main menu next to the header picture and there is not a single pixel wasted above or under the header image. Apart from that I like the basic, clean, minimalistic appearance.

Some points I would like to see improved:
1. The Open Sans font appears huge on my Windows computers. Even if I use Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand it is an advantage on smartphones or smaller tablets. I used the Custom CSS plugin to change it to good old Verdana. Or you can resize it to lets say 0.85em.
2. I would like to use a header picture with less height. But when installing a picture the cropping seems to be locked at 19:6 aspect ratio.
3. I get persistent “Read more” buttons on the front page, even if a post is only a few lines, and even if I don’t use the excerpt function (more tag) in longer posts.
4. Whatever name I set for the custom menu in Appearance > Menu’s, It is shown as “Navigation” in the side bar. This can be confusing on a blog about nautical subjects. The creator of this theme uses a picture of boats on a shipyard as preinstalled header image. Maybe that got away with him ??
I tested the Sticky Header plugin from ThematoSoup with this theme and it works great. N.B.: this plugin does not make the real header sticky, it creates an extra header that appears floating on top when you scroll down.