jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

Greetings friends.  I've looked at numerous posts but not found a suggestion to my seemingly simple problem.  I have an array of data representing sailboat racing information.  It's displayed in the table described below.  As the race progresses, we update info, and would like that to be displayed in the table.

To test the function, I set up a button as follows

$("#rld").click(function(){   alert('clicked');   $('#boatlist').trigger("reloadGrid"); });

And, while it triggers the alert, there is no reflection of changed data in the table below.

Any hints? This is the most current version of jqgrid.

$("#boatlist").jqGrid({
datatype: "local",
width:800,
height:600,
rowNum: 1000,
loadonce:false,
data:boats,
colNames:['Name','Sail','Div','Ch','St','DXX','Fin','Var','Ct','Elapsed','Corr', 'Notes','Status'],
    colModel:[
        {name:'name',index:'name', width:88},
		{name:'sail',index:'sail', width:44,sorttype:function(cell){
		  if(typeof cell === 'number'){return cell};
		  return parseInt(cell.match(/\d+/),10);}
		},
		{name:'div',index:'div', width:33,sorttype:sortDivSta },	
		{name:'dxxflags',width:15,align:'center',formatter:function(cell){
		  return (cell&1)?'C':'-';}
		},
		{name:'dxxflags',width:15,align:'center',formatter:function(cell){
		  return (cell&4)?'S':'-';}
		},{name:'maxdxx',index:'maxdxx', width:33,formatter:flags2dxx,sorttype:bydxx},
        {name:'forfin',index:'forfin', width:55,sorttype:sortNullHi},
		{name:'vfin',index:'vfin', width:55,formatter:sec2hms,sorttype:sortNullHi},
		{name:'ctfin',index:'ctfin', width:25,sorttype:sortNullHi},
		{name:'etime',index:'etime', width:55,formatter:sec2hms,sorttype:sortNullHi},
		{name:'corr',index:'corr', width:55,formatter:sec2hms,sorttype:sortNullHi},
        {name:'note',index:'note', width:120},
		{name:'status',width:27,align:'center',editoptions:{value:"a"},edittype:"select",formatter:"select"},		        
    			
    ],
 });