Oh yeah and it is possible to do some manual alignment on the Loft - the way that works is while you are still in the Loft command before you push "Done", you can click on a profile to reverse the profile's direction, and if all your profiles are closed there is a "seam point" that is displayed which you can drag on to adjust the connection line between the profiles (to see a quick demo of this draw some circles for example and loft and you will see these draggable points show up before you hit "Done" in Loft).

However if you have open curves, or a mixture of open/closed curves you won't have any "seam point" to adjust, that only shows up if they are all closed. Open curves are always connected together by their endpoints and if you have a mixture of open and closed curves, the "natural end" of the closed curve will be used which is not always in a particularly optimal spot, that is why your case here did not work very well.

- Michael