Makes me kind of sad that I got used to the Solarized color scheme already (I use it in VIM, iTerm, Visual Studio etc... ), so I have no use for customizing my color schemes any further. I'd love to use this :(
(Also the designer appears to have based one of the key colour choices on his memories of almost drowning to death as a child. http://www.metafilter.com/102504/Solarized#3636286)
Also solarized comes with various different "contrast versions" have you tried them all? By the way, what's your choice in color scheme being color blind and all?
I find it has good contrast between colours in general. In particular I can actually read the blue it uses on a black background. Most of the colours have good contrast with each other even at extremely low saturation too.
For my vision there are some small tweaks I sometimes make to it but it is generally the most agreeable match to my abnormality I've found in a preset so far.