[boris]

The moon's recession is a tidal effect, and the flip side of the coin is a slowing in the rotation period of Earth. In effect, the Earth is slowing in order to boost the Moon to higher orbits.

BTW, eclipses repeat; a repetition is called a Saros:

qsaros

("sE@rQs)  [Gr. r0qo| or raq¾| (Berossos), a. Assyro-Babylonian _Qr(u.] 

   1. Antiq. The Babylonian name for the number 3600, and hence for a period of 3600 years.
   The notion expressed in quot. 1662, that the saros consisted of 3600 days, is due to the desire to rationalize the incredible statements of Berossos with regard to the lengths of the reigns of the antediluvian kings of Babylon. Other expedients for the same purpose were adopted by early writers on chronology.

   1613 Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 54 Sarus with them is three thousand sixe hundred yeares.  1662 Stillingfl. Orig. Sacræ i. v. §4. 80 The learned Monks, Panodorus and Anianus,+make a Saros to contain 120. months of 30. dayes a piece.  

   2. Astr. Adopted by modern astronomers as the name of the cycle of 18 years and 10 2 / 3 days, in which solar and lunar eclipses repeat themselves.
   This use is founded on the statement of Suidas (app. due to some mistake) that the length of the saros was 18 1 / 2 years.

   1812 Woodhouse Astron. xxxv. 353 The period of 223 lunations, called by the Chaldean Astronomers, the Saros.  1868 Lockyer Elem. Astron. iii. §18 (1879) 102 This period of 18 years 10 days is a cycle of the Moon, known to the ancient Chaldeans and Greeks under the name of Saros.  

[SunkenCiv]

t'anks.