In order to reduce the high risk of typhoon when ships sailing on the sea, an optimization scheme of typhoon avoidance path was designed, which took into account both global and local planning. A* algorithm and artificial potential field method (APF) were improved and applied to global planning and local planning respectively. In the cost function of A* algorithm, the influence originated from fuel consumption and safety was added, and the 24 neighborhood node expansion method which was closer to the actual route was adopted. In addition, the problem of local minimum and unreachable in APF was solved, and the concept of information entropy was introduced to solve the problem of uncertain meteorological factors. The test results show that the proposed method can design a reasonable path to avoid typhoon when the ship will be affected by typhoon and the inaccurate typhoon forecast. The route optimization method is economical and stable on the basis of safety, which can provide a new method for safe navigation and obstacle avoidance.