'No-one knows when Louisiana slick will hit land'

South Pass beach, on Louisiana's southern tip, shows no trace of the BP oil slick - but if oil does comes to shore, reports Alex Thomson, it will come to a place like this first.

To get to the Beach of South Pass is to get to the last edge of the United States.

A wild and deserted sandbank with eight foot reeds blowing in the hot Gulf wind. Patrols of pelicans pass lazily by.

But of the oil there is no sign. Out to sea the drilling rigs, grey and silent on the horizon.

Mercifully, the giant slick remains a three hour boat ride out there in what remains a four to five foot swell.

Which is why you see oil booms in the open ocean here all out of line - overwhelmed by days of wind and high seas.

Inland most booms fringe the scores of reedy islands, marsh and mudbanks, but some too, ripped from their fixings by the vicious tidal currents here.

Alone at this most southerly point of the vast Mississippi Delta, we left, reassured it remains untouched by the brown crude lurking to the south, and headed back north.

Back into the land touched by people. Lush banks of reeds and water hyacinth, dotted with mouldering remains of houses taken by Hurricane Katrina. The swamp reclaims all.

We pass tankers nosing down the bayou to the Gulf. Rates for tankerage already up 50 per cent on fear alone of what the Deepwater disaster might do.

Our skipper, Kerry, a fisherman, banned from fishing for ten days - wondering if it could be ten weeks or months.

And just at the wrong time. Just in May. May: when the season opens for fishing. When you make the money that takes you another year on the delta. When you've just finished spending up on the boat to get it ready.

We putter back to our moorings past all the rattling ramshackle oil support yards. A wave from two officers on a passing coastguard cutter.

Then we pass the suddenly- sprouted mushrooms of modern life: the TV satellite trucks.

Here anxious anchormen intone about why the greatest nation the world has seen can put men on the moon but cannot plug an oil well.

They refer constantly to British Petroleum, rarely BP, comforted it seems by the emphasis on British.

They cannot yet plug the well, but it's kind of, you know, not quite America's fault.

We tie up at the mooring. A flock of magnificent pink flamingos moves overhead, going due south, towards the slick.

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