RODBC query returns no results

Hello,
I'm using RODBC to connect to a database but somehow the queries return no
results. postgresql tells me that there are 963 entries in the table:

gfsDB=# select count(*) from estimates;
 count
-------
   963
(1 row)


but the query in R only returns the column names, not the anticipated data:

chan <- odbcConnect(dsn="gfsDB", uid="postgres")
qu <- paste("select * from estimates")
sqlQuery(chan, qu, errors= TRUE)

[1] specname    tsn         institution region      closedarea  modelno
 [7] parameter   level1      df          estimate    stderr      lowerwaldcl
[13] upperwaldcl chisq       probchisq
<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

odbcGetInfo(chan)

DBMS_Name "PostgreSQL"
DBMS_Ver "08.01.0102 PostgreSQL 8.1.4 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC
gcc (GCC) 4.0.3 (Ubuntu 4.0.3-1ubuntu5)"
Driver_ODBC_Ver "03.00"
Data_Source_Name "gfsDB"
Driver_Name "libpsqlodbc.so"
Driver_Ver "08.01.0102"
ODBC_Ver "03.52"
Server_Name "localhost"

I would like to know how to further troubleshoot this, I'm kind of stuck right 
now. The same query returns the appropriate data when issued through Perl DBI 
or SAS/CONNECT.
Cheers,

Dan