The use of sailing ships also wasn't a British-only thing; a reason the British Navy could sail unusually far is suggested in the article I linked - an understanding of scurvy prevention which other countries didn't have.
So continental europeans had neither budget nor reason to develop long range cruising, whereas Britain, out on the very end of the existing trade chain and maintaining a large navy against invasion, had both.
That leaves Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Spain is well known for having succumbed to the resource-curse from New World metals; Portugal had (due to the papal agreement) to go the other way, and I was under the impression they were very successful doing that until something (what? possibly british pressure?[0]) cut them off[1].
That leaves Ireland. (who may not have been so worried about specifically catholic invasions, but...) I don't know about that case; will poke into why Ireland has never popped up as a naval power!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Empire#British_Ulti...
[1] and of course, using scurvy prevention and accurate longitude determination to go directly to the other end of the traditional trade routes meant that London cut those off as well; by water to London and then to Rotterdam or other ports was in a sense "shorter" than the slow overland trip to the Med from Asia that had been traditional.
Edit: aha, the dutch did the portuguese in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Empire#Iberian_Unio...
(and the dutch/english rivalry is well attested by all the pejoratives left in the language: dutch oven, dutch treat, dutch uncle, etc.)
[0] https://porteconomicsmanagement.org/wp-content/uploads/Map-P...
[1] the Royal Navy of the time had a substantial advantage: its ships cruised needing to put into port only for food & water. The US Navy needs oil.
[2] ever since Suez, however, the mantle of Oceania has firmly descended upon the States, and Britain has been demoted from empire to Airstrip One.