As far as I know I have not encountered the blank and reload problem you describe but I often encounter page/window freezes where Safari refuses to accept any new input of any kind. In fact that happened just now as I was typing this post. The only "fix" I have found is to quit and restart Safari. There are several long threads about this on Apple's Safari Discussion.

Other than that I like Safari 5.1.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein