I also keep my MM in a container of water while I'm wetsanding. I also rinse (most of the time) between grits. I tried speeding up the lathe last night while polishing an acrylic blank, but I wasn't comfortable at that 3600 RPM speed, so backed it down to 2200 or so....
It did go a lot faster than normal.
As a side note...
I find that if you burn through a CA finish, you're either using too coarse of sandpaper, or you didn't get enough CA on. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I put 10 coats minimum for CA (5 thin, and 5 medium). If I have too many ripples I'll use a skew to get it all round, then I start with 500 grit wetsanding, and run through the MM. I know several guys who only sand to 1,000 or 1,200, then just use Tripolee to buff it out the rest of the way.