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Lee Wachtstetter, an 86-year-old Florida widow, took her daughter’s advice. She sold her five-bedroom Fort Lauderdale-area home on 10 acres and became a permanent luxury cruise ship resident after her husband died

Mama Lee, as she’s known aboard the 11-year-old Crystal Serenity, has been living on the 1,070-passenger vessel longer than most of its 655 crewmembers — nearly seven years.

 

“My husband introduced me to cruising,” she recalled. “Mason was a banker and real estate appraiser and taught me to love cruising. During our 50-year marriage we did 89 cruises. I’ve done nearly a hundred more and 15 world cruises.”

What she misses most is her family, but manages to keep in touch with her three sons and seven grandchildren with her laptop computer. “I hear from one of them every day, and visit with them whenever we dock in Miami. Last year we docked in Miami five times.”

“The day before my husband died of cancer in 1997, he told me, ‘Don’t stop cruising.’ So here I am today living a stress-free, fairy-tale life.”

She estimates living the good life on the Serenity this year will cost her $164,000. That’ll cover costs of her single-occupancy seventh deck stateroom, regular and specialty restaurant meals with available lunch and dinner beverages, gratuities, nightly ballroom dancing with dance hosts and Broadway-caliber entertainment — as well as the captain’s frequent cocktail parties, movies, lectures, plus other scheduled daily activities.

Three other women live on Crystal vessels but none nearly as long as Mama Lee, according to Hubert Buelacher, Serenity’s hotel director. “She’s just an amazing woman, one of a kind.”