Skewed path on 28 MHz???

This morning (~8:45 UTC), I heard NH7O in Hawaii on SSB on 28 MHz.

His signal was very weak, maybe 4/1 to 4/2 at best. He was working a pile up and it was obvious that he was getting into the UK and Ireland pretty well. I gave him a call towards the end......managed to get a EI7?? back but then he dived into the noise. I think it was probably just at the end of the opening.

But I was curious. How did the signal get from Hawaii to Ireland?

This is the short path shown above. It almost certainly wasn't short path as the band hadn't opened to the US and the North-West yet. What about long path? Did the signal travel over the South Pacific, over Antarctica and then over Africa???

Or was it a skewed path? From somewhere over the Indian Ocean? I have heard of this before whereby European stations work Japan on 50 MHz by beaming at the Indian Ocean. Not long after hearing NH7O, I could hear the Australian beacon VK8VF/B near Darwin. Earlier, I was hearing the Phillipines on WSPR so the band was certainly open to that part of the world.

Wonder what way people were beaming when they worked him? It's kind of hard for me to tell with my vertical ;o)