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OT: Perhaps not a bad way to spend the golden years

Living on a cruise ship: the endless voyage of Mama Lee


If you love cruising, the idea of living on a cruise ship sounds like a floating fantasy. But there are people who do it, for decades at a time. And I recently came across a book written by one of them.

The cruiser in question is 88-year-old Lee Wachtstetter (better known as “Mama Lee”), and the book is called “I may be homeless, but you should see my yacht” — which shows she has a sense of humour as well as an adventurous spirit. She also has a pretty amazing lifestyle. For Mama Lee, her cabin on the Crystal Serenity is both her home and her retirement residence.

After her husband Mason died in 1997, she was left with a big house and a pile of possessions. The couple were avid cruisers, having done 89 cruises from their home ports in Florida (with a few adventures along the way, like being stranded on a ship crippled by an engine fire). So when she was widowed, she kept on cruising, and in 2005 she sold the house for $1 million U.S., and later began to do it full-time.

She was 77 when she became a full-time cruiser, an age when many people are a bit cautious. But it wasn’t a hard decision for her. “I was in good health,” she writes. “I could afford it, I was already travelling 11 months of the year, and now I no longer had a big house to worry about.” From then on, all the work of daily living — the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping — would be done for her. There would be fine dining and almost constant entertainment. And most nights she’d fall asleep in one country and wake up the next morning in another.

About that: you might think living on a cruise ship is all about seeing the world. But the travel wasn’t the big attraction for Mama Lee, as the ship’s crew calls her: it was the chance to dance. Some ships still have “gentleman hosts”, men hired to dance with the single ladies. And being a widow, she needed partners to feed her insatiable passion for ballroom dancing. Even last year, at her advanced age, she was still dancing once or twice a day.

Aside from dancing, she spends her time doing needlepoint, watching movies in the lounge, taking courses, dining at her permanently reserved table and being pampered by the crew, who treat her like a queen. While she has gone ashore in dozens of ports all around the world — Africa, China, Thailand — these days she mostly stays aboard when the ship pulls into port.

“I’ve discovered that when we’re in port I can see 90 percent of what people see without leaving the ship.” she says.

Mama Lee spent her first couple of years on Holland America’s Prinsendam, but when it cancelled its dance host program in 2008, she switched to the upscale Crystal line. However, she doesn’t live like a movie star: her home is a 276-square-foot window cabin, amidships on deck 7. And while it’s well located, it’s not a balcony cabin or a suite. “I don’t need a butler or a Jacuzzi or the extra space,” she writes. “All I do is sleep in my room.”

She keeps in touch with family through Facebook, and visits when her ship makes port in Fort Lauderdale now and then. She also has friends who book cruises on the Serenity to spend time with her. But on a ship full of people, she’s rarely ever alone.

And of course, she’s racked up an impressive cruise portfolio. If there’s a status above super-platinum, Mama Lee has it: she’s been on more than 200 cruises, passed through the Panama Canal about 50 times, and seen parts of the world most people will never set eyes on. But to her, it’s mostly about having a fun and comfortable retirement. And luckily, she’s stayed healthy through the years.

It’s a thought-provoking story, especially if you’re a cruiser. And Mama Lee is not the only one out there cruising away her retirement years. At time of writing, there were three other women living on her ship, and there are other full-time cruisers sailing around the world as we speak (though nobody seems to know how many).

There are people like Mario Salcedo, 67, who has been living on cruise ships for 20 years and runs an online business while on board. He’s been on 950 cruises and logged 7,000 days at sea, he told the New York Times. And Jack and Willi Ross, from Vancouver, B.C., who moved to a smaller apartment so they could travel almost full-time, including a 180-day round-the-world Oceania cruise.

As well, there’s a luxury yacht called The World that operates as a full-time residence for the well-heeled, selling classy cabins for prices up to $7 million. Oceania Cruises has introduced long-haul “Snowbird in Residence” Caribbean voyages for those wanting to escape winter entirely. And Crystal has plans for three new ships with 48 “Crystal Residences” that cruisers can lease like apartments; they’re due in 2022.

It all sounds idyllic — as long as you’re not prone to seasickness. But how much does it cost? The price for Mama Lee’s life aboard the Crystal Serenity has been widely reported as $164,000 U.S. a year, though she denies that’s even close. Salcedo, meanwhile, says he does it for about $70,000 U.S. a year; others have come up with similar figures. Of course, the actual cost depends on the ship and the cabin you choose, whether you’re single or a couple, and what discounts and perks the cruise line will give you.

That’s a lot of money, for sure. But when you compare it to the cost of retirement options like an assisted living residence, it might not sound that amazing. In 2004, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society published a study that compared the two options over 20 years and concluded they would cost almost the same. And instead of a quiet room in a home filled with other retirees, the cruisers got a life filled with travel and fun.

Still, could you afford it? If you’re on a tight budget, probably not. But if you sold your house for $1 million like Mama Lee, maybe. (Don’t blink: medium-sized houses go for that much every day in Toronto, my home town.) Add a company pension, public pensions, and some well-invested savings, and it enters the realm of possibility. And remember, once you sell the house and car, a lot of day-to-day expenses disappear. There would still be some costs, like medical insurance, but those shouldn’t be deal-breakers unless you’re in poor health.

Leaving your home and family behind can be the hardest thing. But Mama Lee has answers for those arguments, like “I can’t leave the kids” and “my grandchildren need me.” Your kids are adults, she says, and grandkids are great, but they don’t really need you. As for fears of getting bored, he says, there’s so much going on, you’d more likely be exhausted.

Of course, spending your retirement years on a cruise ship isn’t for everyone. It helps to have an adventurous spirit, like Mama Lee. A lifelong curiosity to see new things and meet new people helps, too.

But there’s a name for people like that: they’re called travellers.

http://travellingboomer.com/living-cruis…