No there has always been a connection, you can see if if you look over time on the sat images, they move in tandem. You don't have to have an unbroken line of convection along the entire path.

If you go back and look at Wilma from the time she left the Yucatan and when going over Cuba, oh and also when she had moved into the ATL, looking at the feeder bands she had off and on that was very interesting. At first one was actually pulling dry air all the way from the BOC, over the Yucatan, and up through the NW Carib and north into the GOM and into Wilma in the SE quad, and you would not have been able to spot this by looking for convection....later when she was over central Cuba, one went right over Cuba and pulled warm moist air from the Caribbean, helping her to steadily increase intensity while over the loop current N of Cuba. Once in the Gulf Stream, she moved quickly but kept an elongating feeder band in the southern part of the Gulf Stream to bring in warm moist air. Wilma's structure was very interesting...she formed from two symmetric spiral bands, and at different times in her lifespan, those disappeared but then showed up again later...I think the basic structure was always there, just not so apparent in the dense CDO when she was a very strong hurricane.