: Any opinions on where the widest part of the beam should be located?

: I looked at a top down picture of an NDK explorer and it appears to be widest
: where the front of the coaming is.

Alot of this will depend on what speeds you expect to use the boat for. Fishform generally (very generally) from my experience, tends to be easier to paddle up to a certain speed then runs into a brick wall for speed as the narrow stern falls into the hole created with the bow rising at speed.

The swede form hull tends to counteract that effect, up to a point, and may well be a faster hull if the power is available, but will take more effort to achieve the same speed as the fishform hull above, just will be able to go faster.

So if you want ultimate top speed you might like a swede form hull, if you want a hull that's easy to paddle to more moderate speeds you might like a fishform. This all assumes that everything else is equal, which it rarely is

Bill H.