Until i can get this crap resolved (read previous post) i would watch the site, specifically the ping section
if the pings get all banana sandwich (500-1K+) i would reccomend holding off on doing anything dangerous IE, Swimming/Underwater building, Movement near lava (already got me once), unlit areas.
Keep an eye on this it might save your life and your diamond armor. 🙁
The disconnects during exploration seem to be memory related. Not having enough memory is forcing Java to use swap, which is slow. Allocating more memory will probably make exploration possible.