Mardi Gras – Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Tuesday March 4, 2014

Â Jessica power!

Tonight Matt and I met up with some friends in Fort Lauderdale that we hadn’t really ever met before. We didn’t find each other directly, through finding each other’s blogs, we were somewhat guided towards each other by a mutual cruising friend.Â You may vaguely remember a panicked Facebook post last summer where I needed someone in the Fort Lauderdale area that could hold on to a package for us for a few weeks. This was because while on a trip back to the States and subsequently a few weeks after that backpacking through South America, we realized we could not lug all our boat purchases with us through the southern hemisphere but did want to grab them on a layover in Ft. Lauderdale before heading back to Central America and the boat since we found out a 40 lb package would be $900 to ship! In stepped my friend Brittany who’d spent a good portion of time in Ft. Lauderdale, and hooked me up with her friend Jessica G. of m/v Felicity, who readily agreed to store our package for us until we could retrieve it.

I had only been able to spend about 5 minutes with Jessica while grabbing our stuff before our flight left that night, but I always said, if we get back this way, we will be getting together to share those drinks we never had a chance to before. Plus, being as sweet as she is, Jessica let us use her as a mailbox once more while we had a few things shipped to her address in FL while we were stuck in Mexico with no idea of when we’d get out. As soon as we got in last night I sent her a message to let her know we had arrived, and in between a few more Facebook conversations she not only set us up with a killer spot to be able to land our dinghy while we’re in town, but set us up with her boyfriend Gordon who ran us on errands of filling up our propane and stocking up on drinks before we got together that night at their house to hang out and celebrate Mardi Gras.

The four of us (me, Matt, Gordon, and G’s friend/co-worker Adam) spent 45 minutes in traffic to go the five miles to their house and surprisingly beat Jessica there, who only works a few miles further away herself. We took a few minutes to wander the grounds, admire their pool and 50 ft. Hatteras, and of course, crack open a cold beer. When Jessica walked through the door a few minutes later we greeted each other like long lost friends that hadn’t seen each other in months, which, I guess, we were? Even though we had literally spent less than five minutes talking to each other the first time we met, we dove into a conversation that didn’t let up until a few hours later when the guys said they were leaving to go get hot wings for dinner. I think they just wanted to escape overhearing bits of our girly chatter, but we were so into it that we barely noticed they were gone.

To add to the fun for the night, Jessica took me for a spin on her Dance Revolution game on her Wii where we spun around to Selena Gomez and rocked some smooth moves to Will Smith. We stuffed ourselves on the above mentioned hot wings, specialty Mardi Gras cake, and tried to get a decent photo of the two of us. Between our selfies and handing over the camera to Adam who was trying to get it to work in low light settings…we might have to wait for another occasion for that perfect shot.

For a group of people that we might never have had the chance of knowing, I’m so happy the way the world of cruising and blogging works, that we were put in each others paths and had the chance to get to know each other. Jessica and Gordon have already been a huge help to us here in Fort Lauderdale, and we can’t wait for the chance to spend more time with them.