This paper addresses the problem of path following control for an underactuated hovercraft in the presence of external disturbances and uncertain parameters. By using the backstepping technique, a path following controller is proposed which is able to steer the hovercraft to a neighborhood of a desired path, obtaining global practical stability. In order to make the vehicle robust to external disturbances and uncertain vehicle parameters, a group of disturbance and linear damping coefficients estimators are designed. Simulation and experimental results are presented and analyzed, validating the efficiency of the proposed control strategy.