What is a river eddy
If you want to get serious about whitewater kayaking, you need to have a great understanding of what an eddy is, and how they are formed so that you can use them properly. An eddy is a complicated river feature that has all sorts of different currents affecting it including deep underwater currents, currents that pull opposite to downstream currents, and are found behind other river features. For a whitewater kayaker, an Eddy is a much more important river feature than it is for rafters or canoers. The offer you as a kayaker a lot of opportunities to park your kayak to load and unload, places where you can get out for lunch or to scout a new rapid and a place to rest during a rapid. They work great as meeting spots during a longer rapid that you can meet and discuss upcoming river hydraulics and features to choose the best line.
An eddy is created by the main current of a river hitting an obstacle, compressing as it does and accelerating away. This causes a zone of low pressure to form behind the obstacle which the river attempts to fill in with water. It pushes water from downstream actually upstream against the current to fill in the area. As a kayaker this means that you can easily pull into this eddy area and be pulled safely and securely into an area that you can rest and exit the river from! Once you learn to use eddys properly, it allows you to break river down into segments where you move from eddy to eddy.
Entering and exiting can be challenging to new kayakers. Every eddy has what is known as an eddy line, a line that marks the divide between the main downstream current and the eddys upstream current. The sharper and more pronounced the object, the thicker and stronger the eddyline will be. If it is a rounded object, often times there will not be a strong eddy line and the currents will mix more than divide in a line.
