My wallet seems to update slowly, version 1.5.1.1 and like 38000 blocks behind, currently been getting maybe 1000 blocks per day
Had a similar problem. The way I resolved this was to do a fresh installation of the wallet.
1. Make sure you saved a copy of your wallet.dat file first before proceeding.
2. Remove the sterlingcoin folder from AppData\Roaming (assuming it's a windows installation)
3. Make a fresh installation. (Links for the wallet can be found in the first post).
4. Replace the wallet.dat in the newly created sterlingcoin folder with a copy of the wallet.dat file you saved from your previous wallet.
5. Start the wallet and let it update/sync. It will take a few hours.