SEATTLE — The University of Washington’s football stadium loomed ahead, beyond the traffic, as the Miles family steered toward its usual parking spot one Saturday last month. For 50 years, the family members have arrived at Huskies home games through this entrance the same way: grill gassed, coolers stocked with microbrews, clad entirely in purple.

Their routine would seem like a typical tailgate, if only there were cars.

Members of the Miles family do not come to Huskies games by car, truck, train, bus, or even by land. Instead, the family, now four generations of Huskies die-hards, arrives by boat, same as thousands of other fans at college football’s version of McCovey Cove.

On fall Saturdays, like this fall Saturday, when Washington plays at home, the occupants of Husky Harbor emerge near the stadium’s east end like some sort of tailgate flotilla. They come on charters, luxury yachts and smaller vessels, in sailboats, motorboats and speedboats, even boats coated in purple paint, to the same docks where Rick Neuheisel, a former coach, once drew N.C.A.A. scrutiny for boosters ferrying recruits to the university at below cost.

Once docked or anchored, they tailgate with a twist, a practice the locals have alternately called boatgating, sailgating and sterngating. Here, all of the captains hope Coach Steve Sarkisian and the 4-1 Huskies can, well, continue to right the ship.