The paper addresses the issue of trajectory tracking control for underactuated underwater vehicles whose model is described by quasi-velocities resulting from the decomposition of the inertia matrix. The control algorithm takes into account unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances. It is shown that such mathematical models can be diagonalized and described by inertial quasi-velocities (IQV). The control scheme consists of a kinematic velocity controller and a dynamic adaptive integral sliding mode control algorithm. The paper extends the concept based on velocity transformation and backstepping methods to systems with a symmetric inertia matrix. A proof of the stability of a closed system in IQV space was carried out. The proposed approach was verified on two 3 DOF models of underwater vehicles with constraints due to the application of thruster force limitations.