project to surface - clearly I don't understand

I have a set of object arranged around a circular surface (think diamonds around a ring shank :) I want to project the outline onto the surface. Get the curve, create a direction (per object) toward the origin. Each object creates two curves, which makes sense - output of project has list of two item lists (one item each of the projected curves). I wanted to get the "closer". I thought this would always be the first item in the list. It is not. All of the first items (i.e. index 0) are on one half of the surface rather than near/far as I would have assumed from a projection along the vector