Dan Byrne, Journalist and Sailor, Dies

Daniel J. Byrne, a journalist turned seafarer, died Sunday at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica after a yearlong struggle with cancer. He was 62.

Byrne, who was a news editor for 11 years at The Times and editor of The Los Angeles Times Syndicate for two years, ended his journalism career in 1981 to pursue his dream of sailing.

And that dream reached its highest fulfillment in the early morning hours of May 20, 1983, when he sailed into Newport, R.I., completing a single-handed, 27,000-mile circumnavigation of the world as part of an event called the BOC Challenge Around/Alone.

Byrne, who had grown up in New York City and worked for United Press International and the Phoenix Republic before The Times, learned about sailing from books. When he finished the BOC, he had been at sea for 226 days 9 hours and 58 minutes.

Of Byrne, Jim Murray of The Times once wrote: “You would expect a man who would so test himself, against man’s relentless enemy, the sea, to be a salty old mariner . . . Dan Byrne is, of all things, a newspaperman, an ink-stained wretch, a refugee from the rim of a city-room copy desk. He comes from a long line of dreamers, but his recurring night-time fantasy had him at the helm of a boat . . . “

He is survived by wife Patricia of Santa Monica; stepdaughter Paula Warner, also of Santa Monica; a son, Mark of San Diego, and a daughter, Mary Catherine of West Hollywood.

A viewing is scheduled between 4 and 9 p.m. Friday at Kingsley and Gates, 1925 Arizona St., Santa Monica. A service will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday at Kingsley and Gates.