This paper investigates the trajectory tracking control problem of underactuated surface vehicles in the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances. A dynamic performance-guaranteed adaptive event-triggered control scheme is proposed to transform the original constrained control problem into an equivalent unconstrained problem and ensure that the trajectory tracking is achieved with prescribed performance. By developing a dynamic event-triggered mechanism with adjustable thresholds that can be updated in an adaptive way, the communication burden and actuator wear can be effectively alleviated. To avoid differential explosions that may increase system complexities, an improved transformation-adapted dynamic surface control (DSC) is designed to eliminate adverse effects induced by performance functions and make the DSC applicable to performance-transformed systems. By utilizing the parameter compression algorithm, model uncertainties and external disturbances can be effectively addressed, and the adaptive laws can be integrated into a concise form, with only two online updating parameters required. Comprehensive analysis is provided to verify that all error signals are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB). Compared to existing approaches, the proposed control scheme exhibits lower update frequency.