I am trying to replicate the work that this individual published in their thesis:

http://fluids.me.washington.edu/theses/riley-thesis.pdf

Specifically, the work on pages 11-16 of the thesis (pages 23-28 of the PDF).  I have got everything up to the Filled Surface step.  This step is supposed to patch up the five sided section that cannot be lofted.  I cannot get it to create a mesh.  I have played with the various contact/curvature/tangency combinations of those edges to no avail.  I made a generic model to get the steps down before I started working on the anatomical sections I need to apply this to.  This is what I have:

The following views are of the other side of this branch, where I tried to loft the five sided section closed with a four sided loft with one edge free and a second four sided loft:

However, this produces a seam at the saddle edge and at the straight lined edge that borders the two lofted surfaces.  I have attached the file that I am working with.  I am trying to generate a surface for this section in the same fashion as this tutorial:

The goal is to produce a surface that connects the 5 faces with propagated tangency and/or curvature from those edges to minimize any seams in this region.  Thank you.