She left Bristol last July 21, and solo sailor Donna Lange will return to her adopted town on May 27 after her second solo circumnavigation.

An arrival celebration — keeping in mind that there are no guarantees with sailing schedules — is being planned for the Herreshoff Marine Museum dock from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Friday. (Update — since this was written Monday, Ms. Lange reported Wednesday that she was close to entering the bay so should be able to keep that schedule).

Last weekend, the ocean reminded her that she was not yet done, lashing Inspired Insanity with powerful winds from the wrong direction.

“This was a bonafide gale like we had done in the South Ocean, 35 kt winds gusting into the 40s, more water in the air than the sea, blowing huge tufts into the air with each crashing of IS's hull through the water.”

Still, she remained reasonably confident of making it to the bay on schedule … “Of course, the timing will be as it is when it happens.”

As in the first rounding, the sailor/musician/oceans activist/grandmother and her venerable Bristol-built Southern Cross 28 Inspired Insanity took a pounding. There were knockdowns, breakages, injuries and changes in plan and course but Ms. Lange returns about when she predicted at the outset.

Her ambition with this voyage was to become the first American woman to sail nonstop alone around the world. Further, she intended to do it without GPS, opting instead to rely solely on traditional navigational methods.

Those goals were put out of reach by Pacific gales that knocked her boat down three times. The first of these happened just after she rounded the Cape of New Zealand (one of a series of storms that took a toll on the Sydney Hobart Race fleet) and fractured her boat’s boom. Using a board, fasteners and epoxy given her by Jamestown Distributors, she fashioned a splint that put the boom back in action and enabled her to keep going.

The second and third knockdowns occurred hours apart as she got closer to South America’s Cape Horn. These damaged the wind-driven power generator and the long distance radio and satellite communications system that provided email, weather and phone. There were rigging failures, damage to her self-steering mechanism and the dodger was ripped away.

These forced a decision to abandon the original non-stop plan and set a course for the Panama Canal. There, other sailors and the Seven Seas Cruising Association provided her with assistance — repairs, replacements for broken gear and help getting through the complex and costly canal transit.

Ms. Lange’s life partner Bob Philburn says, “The events that occurred along her detour to the Panama Canal allowed Donna to be the ‘Unintended Cruiser.’ She touched so many people, and they touched her.”

Monday found her closing in on Rhode Island, having left the canal, rounded the west end of Cuba, skirted Florida and hitched a fast ride aboard the Gulf Stream, hitting mileage double her boat’s hull speed capability.

As she passed Florida, she wrote in her lengthy daily blog, “I can see the huge skyscrapers of the SE Florida coastline, 15 miles away, each clumping of towers, another town I am sailing past. I am back in home waters, though the ocean reserves the right to always be created new each day. There is no sense trying to 'figure' out the sea; it has its own way, own flow.”

She added that, with land in sight, loneliness was suddenly tougher to deal with — her Rhode Island arrival couldn’t come quickly enough.

URI women 2nd ranked

The University of Rhode Island women’s sailing team is ranked second in the latest Sailing World college coaches’ poll. Brown’s women’s team stands at number 11. Coast Guard is first.

In the co-ed dinghy rankings, Roger Williams University is in 8th place among collegiate teams, while Brown is 12th. Georgetown is first.