The cruiser USS Vella Gulf returned to port for additional assessment after a day on the seas following repairs to correct a fuel leak, the U.S. Navy said.

The ship, an element of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, deployed with the group to the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 19 but left the convoy near the Canary Islands on Feb. 26.

It returned to Norfolk, Va., its homeport, for a fuel oil leak later blamed on corrosion.

The Ticonderoga-class cruiser set sail again on Mar. 13, but returned home the following day for what a 2nd Fleet spokeswoman called a "technical assessment," WAVY reported.

Spokeswoman Lt. Marycate Walsh said that "after getting underway, USS Vella Gulf returned to Naval Station Norfolk [Saturday] afternoon for technical assessment of the repairs made to the ship's fuel oil tank," USNI News reported on Monday.

The same oil tank is the problem, she added, but evaluations need to be conducted to learn if a new leak developed or if repairs did not remain intact.

The deployment was the second for the ship, commissioned in 1994, in six months.

The Eisenhower strike group deployed with two cruisers, the USS Vella Gulf and the USS Montgomery, as well as destroyers USS Laboon, USS Mitscher, USS Mahan and USS Thomas Hudner.

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