PURPOSE: To aim at miniaturizing a sailing ship and reducing the cost thereof and as well at enhancing the control accuracy of the sailing ship, by automatically controlling the azimuth of the sailing ship which is selected among arithmetic formulae in accordance with the course data from a ground radio station and the wind direction and as well by compensating the angles of a sail and a rudder in accordance with the output of a compensating unit, and further incroporating a computing device in the autopilot.

CONSTITUTION: A transmitter 15 sends the data of sailing which is obtained by a computing unit 6 in an autopilot, to a ground radio station, and the ground radio station sends the data of the latest change in the course to the computing unit 6. The unit 6 selects a predetermined indication value in accordance with the difference between the course indication signal from a course indication device 1 and the change value of the course change data signal, and further, selects an optimum azimuth among arithmetic formulae in accordance with the data including the sailing speed, the present azimuth, the wind direction, etc., so that both drive control devices 8, 11 are controlled in accordance with the result of the computation. Meanwhile, a compensating device 5 recives the data from azimuth and wind direction sensors 3, 4 and feed- back signals from sail and rudder detectors 10, 13 and computes compensation the result of which is delivered to the unit 6. Then the unit 6 delivers an azimuth compensated value to the drive control device 8, 11 in accordance with the present data from the compensating device 5. With this arrangement the sailing is continued with a high degree of accuracy while the azimuth is always compensated.