Since this is your first template, I understand you going with tables. But I would strongly suggest using CSS and div other than tables. If you start using CSS now then you will have little problem learning it later on.
Here is how you will solve your issue.
Find this part on your code
CODE
<td colspan="2"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr><td><!-- START OF NAVIGATION --><table width="200" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
Replace it with
CODE
<td colspan="2"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr><td valign="top"><!-- START OF NAVIGATION --><table width="200" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
All I did was took the TD tag after your TABLE call out and told it to valign the entire content within that cell to align with the top. I attached your html file with the modified content.