After 86-year-old Lee Wachtstetter’s husband died, she decided to sell their ten-acre Fort Lauderdale home and become a permanent luxury cruise ship.
She is known on the Crystal Serenity as Mama Lee, and has been living on the 1,070 passenger vessel for nearly seven years. “My husband introduced me to cruising,” she said. “During our 50-year marriage we did 89 cruises. . . 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.”
Since being aboard the ship Mama Lee has done at least a hundred different cruises, and has been to almost any country that has a port. Living on the Serenity this year will cost her $164,000, which covers the 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. “I’m so spoiled I doubt that I would ever be able to readjust to the real world again.”
See Si Liberman, Woman Pays $164K Per Year to Live on Luxury Cruise Ship, KSDK.com, Jan. 19, 2015.