How To Enter a Eddy
A strong eddy can be a difficult thing to enter for whitewater paddlers. They have counter forces that conspire against you as a paddler to flip you over! Luckily for you, with a few tips and some practice you can learn the secret to getting into eddies easily and successfully every time!
There are two good places to approach that you should use when you want to get into an eddy. You should approach from the high upstream side first and aim to go right behind the center of the feature that is creating the eddy. You want to approach with enough speed to get through the line successfully, and the reason to enter so high is that the strong upstream current high in an eddy will stop your boat quickly and effectively. When you enter an eddy from the far end of it you will not take advantage of the upstream current that will quickly stop and hold you. These tips are of course relative since each eddy is its own entity and should be treated as such.
The angle that you should set when approaching an eddy is a difficult thing to decide. An eddy line naturally works against those who set two shallow an eddy line and buffers them away, but the river itself works against those who set too steep a line will be pulled downstream before they have a chance to even get into the eddy. The trick is to adjust your angle based around the river, with a general guideline of around 45 degrees.
As for the speed that you need to test what works for you and for each eddy. The general rule is that the faster the better. When you go slow into an eddy, you greatly increase a chance that you will flip in that section. Avoid approaching very small eddies with too much speed since you will likely just blow through the eddy altogether!
