Fancybox - adding links to external sites in inline content not working

Fancybox - adding links to external sites in inline content not working

I'm using Fancybox to display my portfolio projects. When you click on a project it opens a hidden div of inline content that contains an image of my project and a description with a link that will open an external link in a different window/tab. The link doesn't work at all. I've tried researching this problem and can't seem to find anything that will get this to work.

I'm not sure if this would cause it to not work, but my html to open up fancybox is within a div that is using a jQuery toggle hide/show effect. I don't think that would be causing it not to work well because if it was then fancybox shouldn't work at all right? If anyone can help me figure out how to do this that would be great! I would think this would be pretty simple to do, but it's more complicated than I thought.

My fancybox js is:
  1. $('.portThumb a').fancybox({
  2.         'titlePosition'    : 'over',       
  3.         'hideOnContentClick' : false
  4.        });

My HTML is:
  1. <div class="portThumb left">
  2.                     <img src="/images/chelasThumb.png" width="180" height="116" alt="Portfolio Project - Chelas Mexican Grill" title="Portfolio Project - Chelas Mexican Grill" />
  3.                     <p><a href="#viewChelas">View Project <img src="/images/viewPrjtArrow.png" class="vmiddle" width="10" height="10" /></a></p>
  4.                     <div class="hide">
  5.                         <div id="viewChelas" class="portPrjtLg">                           
  6.                             <img src="/images/prjts/chelas.jpg" />
  7.                                 <div class="portPrjtDesc">                          
  8.                                 <h3>Chelas Mexican Grill</h3>
  9.                                 <p>description text goes here: <a href="http://chelasmexicangrill.com/" rel="http://chelasmexicangrill.com/" target="_blank">http://chelasmexicangrill.com</a></p>
  10.                                 </div>
  11.                         </div>
  12.                     </div>
  13.                 </div> <!--end port thumb-->