In October 1962 "Fiske" returned to Mayport from the Canary Islands where she had positioned herself for astronaut splashdown. On the evening of her arrival back home, and without her full crew, she was ordered to rendezvous with the in the Windward Passage as the Soviets were challenging the United States in the Cuban Missile Crisis. DDR-842 then joined the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea in February 1963. Following this deployment another change of home port to Newport, Rhode Island, took place.