I have no idea how to fly the ship

[Merder]

So after I launched my ship I just sort of careened around, bumping into stuff, knocking down trees, etc. Then the tutorial thingy pops up and tells me to go back to the ark but I have no idea how to get my ship pointed back at the island, much less land it so I can go back into the ark.

Maybe we could get a bit more in-game guidance on how to fly the ship?

By the way, I love that song that starts playing when you launch the ship.

[Tustle]

Steering a skyship with naught but sails is no easy task aye, hopefully once we get access to wings it'll make flying her easier.

That aside though, uhhh...give them time, it takes awhile to yaw or steer ships left or right but you can always leave the helm while they're going so you can do other things or watch your alignment. While they do seem to steer a little faster while you're in motion meanwhile, I'd strongly recommend not raising sails until you're sure you're clear of any surrounding trees or rocks: ascend from the shipyard first, then point your ship in the direction you want to go.

If you need to go back to whence you came meanwhile, but the wind is blowing against your ship: try tacking or moving diagonal to the direction of the wind. Watch the air currents and the direction that little strip of cloth on your helm is blowing to get an indication of how to approach.

Finally unless you're playing in multiplayer don't think you need a shipyard when docking on an island: just keep her in grappling distance near the ground and you should be good to go, or heck, registering to your ship's sky core will allow you to teleport on board when you're directly below where the sky core is. Just to be on the safe side though, stay away from drones and mantas.

[Zulban]

Tustle's explanation is good, but here's some more specifics, granted I've only flown a little bit. The ships handle much like balloon airships or zeppelins, or the ships from Guns of Icarus Online if you've ever played that. Basically they're almost like seafaring boats but with the added ability to go up and down. You can pitch and roll but I haven't found a use case for those controls yet so you can essentially ignore them.

When you are at the helm you can see the attitude controls and 'throttle' of the ship on the helm itself, but it may be easier to simply look at the attitude controls on the HUD at the bottom of the screen. The gauge on the left indicates whether you are lifting or falling (vertical movement), the large circle in the middle is for pitch and roll so can largely be ignored, the horizontal bar at the bottom is for yaw which is how you steer the ship left and right, and the semi circle on the right is the 'throttle' which can be forward or backwards.

It's important to note that (as far as I can tell with what I've unlocked so far) all of these controls simply use the atlas reactor's power. I'm pretty sure sails will provide thrust even if your controls are set to neutral, so if you're moving when you don't want to you can hold shift at the helm and after a second or two it will retract all sails and return all controls to neutral. The sails will help push you along, but they don't provide any steering (yaw) control which is why the ships seem sluggish. I assume that the wings you unlock later help with this but I haven't gotten the chance to try.