Perhaps you fancy yourself a regular captain of the high seas due to your yearly cruise trip. Get back to swabbing decks though, folks, because there’s a woman who’s been living on a cruise ship longer than most of the crew, after almost seven years of making her home there.

The woman says this year she’s expecting to spend $164,000 to pay her way aboard the Crystal Serenity, as a permanent luxury cruise ship resident, reports the Asbury Park Press.

She started living on the ship — first selling off her five-bedroom Florida home — after her husband passed away. She’s since become a legend, known by the ship’s staff as Mama Lee.

“My husband introduced me to cruising,” she says “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.”

These days she rarely goes ashore as she’s been to most destinations several times, and says she lost count after 100 countries.

“And when most everybody goes ashore it’s so quiet, and I have almost the whole ship for myself.”

As for family and friends, she says she visits with her kids and grandchildren whenever the ship docks in Miami and keeps in touch via her computer.

“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.”

While there are three other women living aboard Crystal ships, no one has been entrenched as long as she has.

“She’s just an amazing woman, one of a kind,” says Serenity’s hotel director.

Woman pays $164K per year to live on luxury cruise ship [Asbury Park Press]

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