Saturday was the start of a three-day weekend and the unofficial kickoff of the summer season, and it brought a sigh of relief to the marina operator and business owners in Vallecito.

Their marina was officially open.

Last year, the operator of Vallecito Marina abruptly left, leaving Vallecito residents and businesses looking at a reservoir with no boats to rent or slips for local boat owners.

The Vallecito Conservation and Sporting Association, a local fishing and outdoors group, decided to step up and operate the marina, no small task for a non-profit group. Volunteers worked hard to get the facility open by the Fourth of July. This year, they’re celebrating that it opened at the start of the summer season.

“It’s Vallecito’s marina,” said Jim Schank, a member of the VCSA, owner of Rocky Mountain General Store, and one of the drivers in getting the marina open.

The group hosted a grand opening on Saturday that attracted a few hundred customers and onlookers, and the Bayfield Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting for the group.

Four Corner River Sports and San Juan Marine brought boats and watercraft to check out.

Also displaying a new boat, or new to them, anyway, were representatives of the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office. They are the new owners of a 25-foot Coast Guard defender craft from Port Aransas, Texas.

The agency bought the boat with drug seizure funds, said Sheriff Sean Smith. Valued at $184,000 in 2006, the Sheriff’s Office purchased it for $40,000.

Smith said he is working with six different agencies who have 10 volunteer divers to help work on lake searches.

While searching the reservoir and surrounding area for Dylan Redwine, who disappeared in November of 2012, the sheriff’s office decided it could use its own search boat, Smith said.

The boat has four sets of scuba gear, and the sheriff’s office wants to buy two more. He also wants to purchase a submersible unit that could go down to the deepest point of an area reservoir and broadcast images of the bottom.

A key component of the craft is its heated and enclosed cab, Smith noted. Searching the water in the winter and spring “was freezing,” he remembered.

The boat will be kept at the sheriff’s office so it can be deployed to McPhee, Lemon, Vallecito, and the Colorado side of Navajo Reservoir. It also could be used in Archuleta County, which had four drownings last year.

The sheriff’s office also wants to purchase another, smaller craft that could be stationed at Vallecito for faster deployment, Smith said.