pg_dump problem

Hi all,

We are trying to do a dump of our database using the command line.
However, the dump falls over during a dump of a particular table.

blast=> \d psiblast_round
            Table "public.psiblast_round"
        Column        |       Type        | Modifiers
----------------------+-------------------+-----------
 id                   | integer           | not null
 region_db_comparison | integer           |
 round_number         | smallint          |
 matrix               | character varying |
 runtime              | integer           |
Indexes: psiblast_round_pkey primary key btree (id),
         psiblast_round_region_db_comp btree (region_db_comparison),
         psiblast_round_round_number btree (round_number)
Foreign Key constraints: $1 FOREIGN KEY (region_db_comparison)
REFERENCES region_db_comparison(id) ON UPDATE NO ACTION ON DELETE NO ACTION

The matrix field holds a string which is very long,  in some cases ~30K+
char long.

The erorr throw is:
pg_dump: message type 0x44 arrived from server while idle
pg_dump: dumpClasses(): SQL command failed
pg_dump: Error message from server: server closed the connection
unexpectedly
       This probably means the server terminated abnormally
       before or while processing the request.
pg_dump: The command was: FETCH 100 FROM _pg_dump_cursor

We are using version:    psql (PostgreSQL) 7.3.4-RH

Is the var char the best type to hold such a long string and is this
likely to be the source of the problem? There is another table which
hold similar info, including the matrix field and we are able to dump
that without any problems.

Any help would be much appreciated. If there is any further info
required, I'll do my best to get it :)


Cheers
Noel