Why buy your own ship when you can live on someone else’s?

That must be the theory of Lee Wachtstetter, an 86-year-old Florida widow.

After her husband died, she sold her house in the Fort Lauderdale area to permanently live on a cruise ship.

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She’s been aboard the Crystal Serenity for nearly 7 years.

“My husband introduced me to cruising,” she tells 9 News. “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.”

The lifestyle will cost her $164,000 this year.

That amount will cover a “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.”

“I enjoy dancing, and this was the best of the remaining ships that still use dance hosts,” Wachtstetter tells the news station. “My husband didn’t dance, just didn’t like to, and encouraged me to dance with the hosts.

“Before coming aboard this ship I lived on a Holland America liner for three years. The day they announced they were stopping the dance host program was the day I decided to leave.

“I dance every night for a couple hours after dinner, have been doing it for years. And I’ve also trained with the ship’s dance instructors.”

Remarkably, Wachtstetter says she’s never been sick aboard the ship.

“All the time I’ve been here I have never had a sick day,” she says. “I’m so spoiled I doubt that I would ever be able to readjust to the real world again.”