The Autumnal Equinox and Precession

Today is the Autumn Equinox, when our sun recrosses the Equator on its jouney to summer in the Southern Hemisphere bringing the north our winter. As a seafarer I recall a belief in strong gales for the Channel and Western Approaches during this season and to this day avoid Channel crossings at this time of year.

The precession of the equinoxes is a fascinating concept, elementary and essential for navigators, which is handled in an extremely informative manner by Wikipedia, linked here, which I commend to those wishing to grasp the place and movement of our earth in this vast universe plus the incredible now near fact that the ancients calculated the cycle of precession, perhaps indicating we are losing rather than gaining knowledge and wisdom, a reality made daily ever plainer as our low calibre political leaders struggle to grasp the fundamentals of what are quite clearly fairly simple basic economic problems.