Beach Photography with a manual focus lens?

I'm going to get a 50mm 1.8 nikkor lens for portraits (but i figure i could use it for other things). The manual focus is 100 bucks cheaper than the AF-S.

So my question is, can you capture pictures of waves with manual focus? Does it just take practice? It seems somewhat difficult…

The reason i want a low light lens for the beach is for sunset/sunrise.
What lens is best for beach photography? I'm jsut talking about general pictures taken from the shore (not like from inside of a wave).

btw i have a nikon d3000

With that lens you can manually focus waves.AF becomes important in very fast moving things and is only really good on great lenses. Not all AF lenses focus quickly. The ones that do are very expensive. If you want to get a much better lens, save up for the 50mm f1.4 It has a much nicer look to it.

To manual focus on moving subjects, like waves, you can pre-focus on a set distance and wait for the wave to move into the focal distance. You should also understand how much depth of field you have for your lens setting. With narrower apertures, you get more depth of field, but less light. So there's a larger distance both in front of and behind your focal point that is in acceptable focus.

Manual focus on things that are a roughly fixed distance away is easy. But I don't think you need a f/1.8 lens for sunrise and sunset. Although it's not as bright as midday sun, it's also not "low light". Low light usually means indoors.