In this paper, we research the event-triggered exponential tracking problem for the longitudinal speed control model and the bow control model of unmanned surface vehicles. By combining adaptive control and sliding mode control methods, we propose two digitally implementable control laws and their corresponding event-triggered mechanisms to solve this problem. In this way, both the longitudinal and bow tracking errors can converge to any adjustable neighborhood of the origin at an exponential rate, and the convergence rates can be adjusted by some design parameters.